German mediatization (English: /miːdiətaɪˈzeɪʃən/; German: deutsche Mediatisierung) was the major territorial restructuring that took place between 1802 and 1814 in Germany and the surrounding region by means of the mass mediatization and secularization[1] of a large number of Imperial Estates. Most ecclesiastical principalities, free imperial cities, secular principalities, and other minor self-ruling entities of the Holy Roman Empire lost their independent status and were absorbed into the remaining states. By the end of the mediatization process, the number of German states had been reduced from almost 300 to just 39.

In the strict sense of the word, mediatization consists in the subsumption of an immediate (German: unmittelbar) state into another state, thus becoming mediate (mittelbar), while generally leaving the dispossessed ruler with his private estates and a number of privileges and feudal rights, such as low justice. For convenience, historians use the term mediatization for the entire restructuring process that took place at the time, whether the mediatized states survived in some form or lost all individuality. The secularization of ecclesiastical states took place concurrently with the mediatization of free imperial cities and other secular states.

The mass mediatization and secularization of German states that took place at the time was not initiated by Germans. It came under relentless military and diplomatic pressure from revolutionary France and Napoleon. It constituted the most extensive redistribution of property and territories in German history prior to 1945.[2]

The two highpoints of the process were the secularization/annexation of ecclesiastical territories and free imperial cities in 1802–03, and the mediatization of secular principalities and counties in 1806.

Although most of its neighbors coalesced into relatively centralized states before the 19th century, Germany did not follow that path. Instead, the Holy Roman Empire largely maintained its medieval political structure as a "polyglot congeries of literally hundreds of nearly sovereign states and territories ranging in size from considerable to minuscule".[3] From a high of nearly 400 – 136 ecclesiastical and 173 secular lords plus 85 free imperial cities – on the eve of the Reformation, this number had only reduced to a little less than 300 by the late-18th century.[4] The traditional explanation for this fragmentation (Kleinstaaterei) has focused on the gradual usurpation by the princes of the powers of the Holy Roman Emperor during the Staufen period (1138–1254), to the point that by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Emperor had become a mere primus inter pares. In recent decades, many historians have maintained that the fragmentation of Germany – which started out as a large polity while its neighbors started small – can be traced back to the geographical extent of the Empire – the German part of the Empire being about twice the size of the realm controlled by the king of France in the second half of the 11th century – and to the vigor of local aristocratic and ecclesiastical rule from early on in the medieval era. Already in the 12th century, the secular and spiritual princes did not regard themselves as the Emperor's subordinates, still less his subjects, but as rulers in their own right - and they jealously defended their established sphere of predominance.[5] At the time of Emperor Frederick II's death in 1250, it had already been decided[by whom?] that the regnum teutonicum was "an aristocracy with a monarchical head".[6]

Among those states and territories, the ecclesiastical principalities were unique to Germany. Historically, the Ottonian and early Salian Emperors, who appointed the bishops and abbots, used them as agents of the imperial crown - as they considered them more dependable than the dukes they appointed and who often attempted to establish independent hereditary principalities. The emperors expanded the power of the Church, and especially of the bishops, with land grants and numerous privileges of immunity and protection as well as extensive judicial rights, which eventually coalesced into a distinctive temporal principality: the Hochstift. The German bishop became a "prince of the Empire" and direct vassal of the Emperor for his Hochstift,[7] while continuing to exercise only pastoral authority over his larger diocese. The personal appointment of bishops by the Emperors had sparked the investiture controversy in the 11th century, and in its aftermath the emperor‘s control over the bishops' selection and rule diminished considerably. The bishops, now elected by independent-minded cathedral chapters rather than chosen by the emperor or the pope, were confirmed as territorial lords equal to the secular princes.

Having to face with the territorial expansionism of the increasingly powerful secular princes, the position of the prince-bishops became more precarious with time. In the course of the Reformation, several of the bishoprics in the north and northeast were secularized, mostly to the benefit of Protestant princes. In the later sixteenth century the Counter-Reformation attempted to reverse some of these secularizations, and the question of the fates of secularized territories became an important one in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). In the end, the Peace of Westphalia confirmed the secularization of a score of prince-bishoprics, including the archbishoprics of Bremen and Magdeburg and six bishoprics with full political powers,[8] which were assigned to Sweden, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. On the other hand, Hildesheim and Paderborn – under Protestant administration for decades and given up for lost – were restored as prince-bishoprics.[9] In addition, the Peace conclusively reaffirmed the imperial immediacy, and therefore the de facto independence, of the prince-bishops and imperial abbots, free imperial cities, imperial counts, as well as the imperial knights. According to one authority, the sixty-five ecclesiastical rulers then controlled one-seventh of the total land area and approximately 12% of the Empire's population, perhaps three and a half million subjects.[10]

Due to the traumatic experience of the Thirty Years' War and in order to avoid a repetition of this catastrophe, the German rulers great or small were now inclined to value law and legal structures more highly than ever before in the history of the Empire. This explains in good part why medium and small states, both ecclesiastical and secular, were able to survive and even prosper in the vicinity of powerful states with standing armies such as Brandenburg/Prussia, Bavaria and Austria.[11]

While no actual secularization took place during the century and a half that followed the Peace of Westphalia, there was a long history of rumors and half-baked plans on possible secularizations. The continued existence of independent prince-bishoprics, an anomalous phenomenon unique to the Holy Roman Empire, was increasingly considered an anachronism especially, but not exclusively, by the Protestant princes, who also coveted these defenseless territories. Thus, secret proposals by Prussia to end the War of the Austrian Succession called for increasing the insufficient territorial base of the Wittelsbach Emperor Charles VII through his annexation of some prince-bishoprics.[12] In 1743, Frederick II's minister Heinrich von Podewils wrote a memorandum that suggested giving to the Wittelsbach Emperor the bishoprics of Passau, Augsburg and Regensburg, as well as the imperial cities of Augsburg, Regensburg and Ulm. Frederick II added the archbishopric of Salzburg to the list and Charles VII went as far as adding the bishoprics of Eichstätt and Freising. The plan caused a sensation, and outrage among the prince-bishops, the free imperial cities and the other minor imperial estates, and the bishops discussed raising an army of 40,000 to defend themselves against the Emperor who contemplated grabbing ecclesiastical land that his coronation oath committed him to protect.[13] Although the sudden death of Charles VII put an end to this scheming, the idea of secularization did not fade away. It was actively discussed during the Seven Years' War, and again during Joseph II's maneuverings over the Bavarian inheritance[14] and during his later exchange plan to swap Bavaria for the Austrian Netherlands, which included a secret provision for the secularization of the Archbishopric of Salzburg and the Provostry of Berchtesgaden. Yet, none of these projects ever came close to be implemented because, in the end, key actors appreciated that the secularization of one single prince-bishopric would open a Pandora's box and have severe repercussions on the institutional stability of the Empire.

In the late 18th century, the continued existence of the Holy Roman Empire, despite its archaic constitution, was not seriously threatened from the inside. It took an external factor – the French Revolution – to shake the Empire to its foundation and bring its demise.

The Rhineland in 1789: The annexation of the entire left bank of the Rhine by the French Republic set in motion the mediatization process

After Revolutionary France had declared war on Prussia and Austria in April 1792, its armies had invaded and eventually consolidated their hold over the Austrian Netherlands and the rest of the left bank of the Rhine by the end of 1794. By then, the French leaders had already resolved more or less openly to annex those lands to the Republic as soon as circumstances permitted. Persuading the German states and princes that were fated to lose their possessions west of the Rhine to come to terms with what amounted to massive French spoliation of German land by compensating themselves with land on the right bank became a constant objective of the French revolutionaries and later Napoleon Bonaparte. Moreover, given that the German Catholic clergy at all levels were the most implacable enemies of the "godless" Republic, and had actually provided the first cause of war between France and the Holy Roman Empire through provocative action such as allowing émigré French nobles to carry on counterrevolutionary activities from their land, the French leaders estimated that the ecclesiastical rulers and other clerics – who collectively were the ones who were losing the most on the left bank – should be excluded from any future compensation. On the other hand, the secular rulers entitled to compensation should be compensated with secularized ecclesiastical land and property located on the right bank.[15][16]

Already, the Franco-Prussian Treaty of Basel of April 1795 spoke of "a compensation" in case a future general peace with the Holy Roman Empire surrendered to France the German territories west of the Rhine, including the Prussian provinces. A secret Franco-Prussian convention signed in August 1796 spelled out that such a compensation would be the Prince-Bishopric of Münster and Vest Recklinghausen.[17] In addition, article 3 provided that the Prince of Orange-Nassau, dynastically related to the king of Prussia who actively defended his interests, would be compensated with the Prince-Bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg if his loss of the Dutch hereditary stadtholdership, which followed the creation of the French-backed Batavian Republic, was to become permanent.[18] Likewise, the peace treaties France signed with Württemberg and Baden the same month contained secret articles whereby France committed to intercede to obtain the cession of specific ecclesiastical territories as their compensation in case their losses became permanent.[19]

Signed in the wake of major French victories over the Austrian armies, the Treaty of Campo Formio of October 1797, dictated by General Bonaparte, provided that Austria would be compensated for the loss of the Austrian Netherlands and Austrian Lombardy with Venice and Dalmatia. A secret article, not implemented at the time, added the Archbishopric of Salzburg and a portion of Bavaria as additional compensation. The treaty also provided for the holding of a congress at Rastatt where delegates of the Imperial Diet would negotiate a general peace with France. It was widely and correctly anticipated that France would demand the formal cession of the entire west bank, that the dispossessed secular princes be compensated with ecclesiastical territories east of the Rhine, and that a specific compensation plan be discussed and adopted.[20][21] Indeed, on 9 March 1798, the delegates at the congress at Rastatt formally accepted the sacrifice of the entire left bank and, on 4 April 1798, approved the secularization of all the ecclesiastical states save the three Electorates of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, whose continued existence was an absolute red line for Emperor Francis II.[22] The congress, which lingered on well into 1799, failed in its other goals due to disagreement among the delegates on the repartition of the secularized territories and insufficient French control over the process caused by the mounting power struggle in Paris.

Contemporary engraving celebrating the Treaty of Lunéville

In March 1799, Austria, allied with Russia, resumed the war against France. A series of military defeats and the withdrawal of Russia from the war forced Austria to seek an armistice and, on 9 February 1801 to sign the Treaty of Lunéville which mostly reconfirmed the Treaty of Campo Formio and the guidelines set at Rastatt.[23] Article 7 of the treaty provided that "in conformity with the principles formally established at the congress of Rastatt, the empire shall be bound to give to the hereditary Princes who shall be dispossessed on the left bank of the Rhine, an indemnity, which shall be taken from the whole of the empire, according to arrangements which on these bases shall be ultimately determined upon."[24] This time, Francis II signed the treaty not only on Austria's behalf but also on behalf of the Empire, which officially conceded the loss of the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine.[25]

The sudden realization in wake of Campo Formio that the Empire was on the threshold of radical changes triggered a heated debate on the issues of compensation and secularization conducted in pamphlets, in the press, in the political correspondence within and between the territories and at the Imperial Diet.[26] Among other arguments, the defenders of the ecclesiastical states insisted that it was fundamentally illegal and unconstitutional to dissolve any imperial estates, and that the notion of compensating rulers for lost territory was contrary to all past treaties, where "each had to bear his own fate". They contended that even if circumstances now made it necessary, the amount of compensation should be limited to the amount of territory, or income, lost, and that all the Estates of the Empire, and not just the ecclesiastical states, should bear the burden. They warned that a complete secularization would be such a blow to the Empire that it would lead to its demise.[26][27] Generally, the proponents of secularization were less vocal and passionate, in good part because they realized that the course of events was in their favor. Even when they were in agreement with some of the anti-secularization arguments, they contended that Notreich (the law of necessity) made secularization unavoidable: the victorious French unequivocally demanded it and since peace was essential to the preservation of the state, sacrificing part of the state to preserve the whole was not only permissible but necessary.[28]
For its part, Austria was to be consistently hostile to secularization, particularly in its wholesale form, since it realized it had more to lose than to gain from it as it would result in the disappearance of the ecclesiastical princes and prelates from the Imperial Diet and the loss of their traditional support for the Emperor.[29] Likewise, the Electors of Hanover and Saxony opposed the principles of compensation and secularization, not out of sympathy for the Catholic Church, but because they feared it would lead to the aggrandizement of Prussia, Austria and Bavaria.[26]

The Final Recess of the Imperial Deputation (German: Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) of 25 February 1803 is commonly referred to as the Imperial law that brought about the territorial restructuring of the Empire by reallocating the ecclesiastical states and the imperial cities to other imperial estates. In reality, neither the Final Recess nor the Imperial Deputation which drafted it played a significant role in the process since many key decisions had already been taken behind closed doors in Paris before the Deputation even started its work. The Final Recess was nevertheless indispensable since it bestowed a constitutional seal of approval on the major territorial and political restructuring that would otherwise have lacked legitimacy.

Hard-pressed by Bonaparte, now firmly at the helm in France as First Consul, the Empire was obliged soon after Lunéville to take on the task of drawing up a definitive compensation plan (Entschädigungsplan). The Imperial Diet resolved to entrust that task to the Emperor, as plenipotentiary of the Empire, while it intended to reserve the final decision to itself. Not wanting to bear the full onus of the changes that were bound to occur under French dictate, Francis II declined. After months of deliberations, a compromise was reached in November 1801 to delegate the compensation task to an Imperial Deputation (Reichsdeputation), with France to act as 'mediator'. The Deputation consisted of the plenipotentiaries of the Electors of Mainz, Saxony, Brandenburg/Prussia, Bohemia and Bavaria, and of the Duke of Württemberg, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order.[30][31]

Contemporary map showing the partition of Münster

Soon after Lunéville, the key German rulers entitled to compensation moved quickly to secure their compensation directly with France, and Paris was soon flooded with envoys bearing shopping lists of coveted territories. The French government encouraged the movement.[32] Bonaparte left the details to his foreign minister Talleyrand, who famously lined his pockets with bribes.[33][34] Meanwhile, Bonaparte, who had been courting the new Tsar Alexander I, replied favourably to the latter's wish to become involved in the process as co-mediator. On 19 October 1801 the two countries signed an agreement to act jointly as the “mediating Powers”.[32] Essentially, Alexander, whose wife and mother belonged to the princely houses of Baden and Württemberg, wanted to favor his various German relatives and this concurred with France's long-standing aim to strengthen the southern states of Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria, strategically located between France and Austria, the arch-foe.[35][36]
Hectic discussions and dealings went on, not only with the mediating Powers and between the various princes, but within the various governments as well. Inside the Prussian cabinet, one group pushed for expansion westward into Westphalia while another favored expansion southward into Franconia, with the pro-Westphalian group finally prevailing.[37] Between July 1801 and May 1802, preliminary compensation agreements were signed with Bavaria, Württemberg, and Prussia and others were concluded less formally with Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Cassel and other mid-level states.[32]

Frantic discussions and dealings went on simultaneously in Regensburg, where the Imperial Diet and its Deputation were in session. In particular, many mid and lower ranking rulers who lacked influence in Paris – the dukes of Arenberg, Croy and Looz, the prince of Salm-Kyrburg, the counts of Sickingen and Wartenberg, among others – tried their chances with the French diplomats posted at Regensburg, who could recommend additions or amendments to the general compensation plan, generally in exchange for bribes.[38] Nevertheless, all claims were examined and there was an effort to detect fictitious or exaggerated claims. The Imperial Deputation very seldom examined the claims and grievances, which were almost automatically transferred to the local French officials for decision or referral to Talleyrand in Paris.[39][40]

A "general compensation plan" combining the various formal and informal accords concluded in Paris was drafted by Talleyrand in June 1802, approved by Russia with minor changes,[41] and submitted almost as an ultimatum to the Imperial Deputation when it finally convened at Regensburg for its first meeting on 24 August 1802. It was stated in the preamble that the mediating Powers had been forced to come up with a compensation plan due to the "irreconcilable differences between the German Princes" regarding the details of compensation, and the Imperial Deputation's delay in starting its work. It was said that the plan, "based on calculations of unquestionable impartiality" endeavored to effect compensation for recognized losses while “maintaining the pre-war balance of power between the key German rulers", two goals that were somewhat contradictory.[42] The original rationale for compensation, which had been to compensate strictly for territory lost, had been replaced by political objectives: to favor powerful or well-connected rulers and to woo potential allies.

Prussia's territorial losses and gains during the period

As Austria had been excluded from the discussions, its envoy at Paris only learned of the plan when he read it in Le Moniteur. He swiftly negotiated revisions which confirmed both Francis II's Imperial prerogatives and his rights as ruler of Austria. The Habsburgs' compensation package was also augmented with additional secularized bishoprics.[43] Francis II had been hostile to secularization, but once it became clear that near complete secularization was unavoidable, he fought as hard as any other ruler to obtain his share of the spoils. He was particularly adamant that his younger brother Ferdinand, who had been dispossessed of his secundogenitureGrand Duchy of Tuscany by the invading French, be adequately compensated.

The Imperial Deputation, originally entrusted with the compensation process but now reduced to a subordinate role, tended to be seen by the mediating Powers and the key German States as mere constitutional window dressing. This was demonstrated with the Franco-Prussian agreement of 23 May 1802 which, ignoring the Imperial Deputation that has not yet convened, stated that both the King of Prussia and the Prince of Orange-Nassau could take possession of the territories allotted to them immediately after ratification.[44] Two weeks later, the King issued a proclamation listing all the compensation territories awarded to Prussia but he waited until the first week of August 1802 before occupying the bishoprics of Paderborn and Hildesheim and its share of Münster, as well as the other territories that had been allotted to Prussia. The same month, Bavarian troops entered Bamberg and Würzburg a week after Elector Maximilian IV Joseph had written to their respective prince-bishops to inform them of the imminent occupation of their principalities.[45] During the autumn, Bavaria, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Württemberg, and even Austria, proceeded to occupy the prince-bishoprics, imperial abbeys, and free Imperial cities that had been allotted to them. Formal annexation and the establishment of a civil administration usually followed within a few weeks. Such haste was due in good part to the fear that the June plan might not be definitive and therefore it was thought safer to occupy the allotted territories and place everyone before a fait accompli. That strategy was not foolproof however and Bavaria, which had been in occupation of the bishopric of Eichstätt since September, was forced to evacuate it when the Franco-Austrian convention of 26 December 1802 reallocated most of Eichstätt to the Habsburg compensation package.[46] For their parts, the lesser princes and the counts, with little manpower and resources, generally had to wait until the Final Recess was issued before they could take possession of the territories – if any – that were awarded to them as compensation, usually a secularized abbey or one of the smaller imperial cities.

On 8 October 1802, the mediating Powers transmitted to the Deputation their second general compensation plan whose many modifications reflected the considerable number of claims, memoirs, petitions and observations they had received from all quarters. A third plan was transmitted in November and a final one in mid-February 1803. It served as the basis for the Final Recess that the Deputation issued at its 46th meeting on 25 February 1803.[47] The Imperial Diet approved it on 24 March and the Emperor ratified it on 27 April.[32] The Emperor however made a formal reservation with respect to the reallocation of seats and votes within the Imperial Diet. While he accepted the new ten-member College of Electors, which would for the first time have a Protestant majority,[48] he objected to the strong Protestant majority within the new College of Princes (77 Protestant vs 53 Catholic votes, plus 4 alternating votes), where traditionally the Emperor's influence had been the most strongly felt, and he proposed religious parity instead.[49] Discussions regarding this matter were still ongoing when the Empire was dissolved in 1806.

Under the terms of the Final Recess, all the ecclesiastical principalities – archbishoprics, bishoprics and abbeys – were dissolved except for the Archbishopric-Electorate of Mainz, the Teutonic Order and the Order of Malta. Archbishop Karl Theodor von Dalberg of Mainz had salvaged his Electorate by convincing Bonaparte that his position as Imperial Archchancellor was essential to the functioning of the Empire. As much of his Electorate, including the cathedral city of Mainz, has been annexed by France, the archbishopric was translated to Regensburg and augmented with some remnants of the Electorate east of the Rhine, and Wetzlar. Dalberg, who was confirmed as Elector and Imperial Archchancellor and gained the new title of Primate of Germany, was to prove a constant and useful ally of Napoleon during the coming years.[50][51] In addition, under the dogged insistence of the Emperor, the Teutonic Order, whose Grand Master was generally an Austrian archduke, as well as the Knights of St John (Knights of Malta), were also spared and their scattered small domains were augmented with several nearby abbeys. The intent here was to provide livings for some of the 700 noble members of the cathedral chapters whose property and estates had been expropriated when the prince-bishoprics were secularized.[52][53]
Some prince-bishoprics were transferred whole to a new owner while others, such as Münster, Trier, Cologne, Würzburg, Augsburg, Freising, Eichstätt, Passau and Constance, were either split between two or several new owners or had some districts or exclaves allotted to different new owners. The substantial property and estates of the bishoprics' cathedral chapters were also expropriated.

Austrian soldiers and monks at Salem Abbey at the time of secularization

The Final Recess detailed the financial and other obligations of the new rulers toward the former rulers, dignitaries, administrators and other civilian and military personnel of the abolished ecclesiastical principalities. The former prince-bishops and prince-abbots remained immediate to the emperor for their own person. They retained extensive authority, including judicial jurisdiction in civil and some criminal matters over their servants (art. 49). They retained the title and ranking of prince-bishop or prince-abbot for life and were entitled to a number of honors and privileges (art. 50). However, the prince-bishops' palatial residences, such as the Würzburg Residence and Schloss Nordkirchen, passed to new owners and the bishops were granted more modest lodgings as well as the use of a summer residence. The former prince-bishops, prince-abbots and imperial abbots and abbesses were entitled to an annual pension ranging from 20,000 to 60,000 gulden, 6,000 to 12,000 gulden and 3,000 to 6,000 gulden respectively, depending on their past earnings (art. 51). While secularization stripped the prince-bishops of their political power and abolished their principality, they were still bishops and they retained normal pastoral authority over their diocese, parishes and clergy. Some, such as Bishop Christoph Franz von Buseck of Bamberg, adjusted to their diminished circumstances and stayed in their diocese to carry on their pastoral duties;[54] others, such as Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo of Salzburg, abandoned their pastoral duties to auxiliary bishops and went to live in Vienna or on their family estates.

The 51 free imperial cities[55] had less to offer in the way of territory (7,365 square kilometres (2,844 sq mi)) or population (815,000) than the ecclesiastical states but the secular princes had long resented the independence of the ones enclaved within their territory. With a few exceptions, they suffered from an even worse reputation of decay and mismanagement than the ecclesiastical states.[56][57]

Mediatization of Schwäbisch Hall in contemporary imagery

A few imperial cities had been included in some of 18th century stillborn secularization plans, chiefly because they were either contiguous to or enclaved within a prince-bishopric targeted for secularization. While the secret compensation provisions of the treaties of 1796 with Prussia, Baden and Württemberg targeted only ecclesiastical territories, by the time the Congress of Rastatt opened in late 1797, there were widespread rumors about the abolition of at least some cities. Alarmed by such rumors, the imperial cities of the Swabian Circle, where about half of all the imperial cities were located, held a special conference at Ulm in early March 1798 to examine the situation, for which they felt helpless.[58] However, given that it was expected from the start that the handful of the largest and wealthiest cities would maintain their independence, the expected mediatization of the imperial cities did not raise much public interest.[59] The survival of an imperial city often hung by a thread: while Regensburg and Wetzlar, seats of the Imperial Diet and the Imperial Cameral Tribunal respectively, were still on the short list of imperial cities that were to survive in the June 1802 general compensation plan, they were secularized a few months later in order to beef up the newly created Principality of Aschaffenburg that was to constitute the territorial base of Archbishop von Dalberg, the Imperial Archchancellor. In the end, only Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Frankfurt, Augsburg, and Nuremberg survived mediatization in 1803.

Following the Final Recess, the scattered estates of approximately 300 free Imperial Knights and 99 Imperial Counts, totaling perhaps 4,500 square miles, should have remained untouched. But by the winter of 1803, the rulers of Bavaria, Hesse-Kassel, and Württemberg began to take possession of these tiny enclaves through a combination of Surrender and Transfer Edicts (Abtretungs- und Überweisungspatenten) and military force. Other smaller rulers, such as the Prince of Leiningen, followed suit. This came to be known as the Rittersturm.[60]

By autumn 1803, the majority of the knightly estates were de facto annexed by their larger neighbors. In January 1804, the seizures were declared illegal by the Emperor Francis II. Although the Emperor was unable to reverse the annexations, the threat of force put a stop to further seizures. Still, this violence was to have grave consequences for the small princes of the Empire. With the effective end of imperial governance following the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805, the violence done unto the knights and counts was extended to these defenseless princes, resulting in a second great mediatization in 1806.

The formal mediatization of the imperial knights and counts was legalized by Article 25 of the Treaty of the Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbundakte), which sanctioned unilateral action by territorial states.

While the original intent had been to compensate the dispossessed secular rulers only for lost territory, that criterion was to be applied only to the minor princes and the counts who sometimes only received an annuity or a territorial compensation so modest that it had to be augmented with an annuity paid by better provided princes in order that their total income would not be less than their former income.[61]

In the case of the larger states, they generally received more than the territory they had lost. Baden received over seven times as much territory as it had lost, Prussia nearly five times. Hanover gained the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück, even though it had lost nothing. The Duchy of Oldenburg, closely connected to Tsar Alexander I, received a sizeable chunk of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster although it had lost only the income of a toll station. Austria also did relatively well.[62] In addition, the two Habsburg archdukes who had been dispossessed of their Italian realms (the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Duchy of Modena) were also compensated even though their realms were not part of the Holy Roman Empire. Likewise, the King of Prussia was able to obtain a generous territorial compensation for the dynastically related Prince of Orange-Nassau whose losses had been in the defunct Dutch Republic.

In all, 112 imperial estates disappeared. Apart from the territory ceded to France, their land and properties were distributed among the seventy-two rulers entitled to compensation.[62]

The outcome of the compensation process confirmed by the Final Recess of February 1803 was the most extensive redistribution of property in German history before 1945. Approximately 73,000 km2 (28,000 sq mi) of ecclesiastical territory, with some 2.36 million inhabitants and 12.72 million guildens per annum of revenue was transferred to new rulers.[2]

The position of the established Roman Catholic Church in Germany, the Reichskirche', was not only diminished, it was nearly destroyed. The Church lost its crucial constitutional role in the Empire; most of the Catholic universities were closed, as well as hundreds of monasteries and religious foundations. It has been said that the Final Recess of 1803 did to German land ownership what the Revolution had done to France.[63]

On 12 June 1806, Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine to extend and help secure the eastern border of France. In reluctant recognition of Napoleon's dismemberment of imperial territory, on 6 August 1806, the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II declared the Empire abolished, and claimed as much power as he could retain as ruler of the Habsburg realms. To gain support from the more powerful German states, the former Holy Roman Emperor accepted, and Napoleon encouraged, the mediatization by those that remained of their minor neighbouring states. Mediatization transferred the sovereignty of more than 100 small secular states to their larger neighbours, most of whom became founding members of the Confederation in order to participate in the annexations.

Between the first abdication of Napoleon in 1814 and the Battle of Waterloo and the final abdication of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna was convened by the Great Powers to redraw the borders of Europe. During this time, it was decided that the mediatised principalities, free cities, and secularised states would not be reinstated. Instead, the former rulers who held a vote within the Imperial Diet were to enjoy an improved aristocratic status, being deemed equal to the still-reigning monarchs for marital purposes, and entitled to claim compensation for their losses. But it was left to each of the annexing states to compensate mediatised dynasties, and the latter had no international right to redress if dissatisfied with the new regime's reimbursement decisions. In 1825 and 1829, those houses which had been designated the "Mediatized Houses" were formalised, at the sole discretion of the ruling states, and not all houses that ruled states that were mediatised were recognised as such.

As a result of the Congress of Vienna, only 39 German states remained.

^Unlike those, some secularized prince-bishoprics in the north and northeast, such as Brandenburg, Havelberg, Lebus, Meissen, Merseburg, Naumburg-Zeitz, Schwerin and Camin had ceased to exercise independent rights and had effectively become subordinate to powerful neighboring rulers well before the Reformation. Therefore, they had become prince-bishoprics in name only. Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, Volume I, Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 89.

^Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder. European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 59.

^Anton Schindling, "The Development of the Eternal Diet in Regensburg", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, Supplement: Politics and Society in the Holy Roman Empire, 1500–1806 (Dec., 1986), p. S66.

^A letter of Talleyrand to Laforest, the head of the French delegation in Regensburg, alludes to millions being paid by, among others, the three Hanseatic Cities (Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen) Frankfurt and Württemberg. Manfred Wolf, pp. 147–153.

^The Habsburg dynasty's tenure of the emperorship was not seriously threatened since the Habsburg would control two electoral votes (Bohemia and Salzburg) instead of one (Bohemia), and the key Protestant Electors would effectively neutralize each other: Hanover and Saxony would never contemplate electing a Prussian emperor and vice versa. Whaley, vol. II, p. 628–629.

^There were also 5 remaining Reichsdörfer (imperial villages), out of more than 200 in the Middle Ages, that had survived precariously under the Emperor's distant protection. Unlike the imperial cities, they were not represented at the Imperial Diet and in the Circles.

1.
Holy Roman Empire
–
The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806. On 25 December 800, Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne as Emperor, reviving the title in Western Europe, more than three centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The title was revived in 962 when Otto I was crowned emperor, fashioning himself as the successor of Charlemagne, some historians refer to the coronation of Charlemagne as the origin of the empire, while others prefer the coronation of Otto I as its beginning. Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolution of the institutions and principles constituting the empire, the office of Holy Roman Emperor was traditionally elective, although frequently controlled by dynasties. Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire on 6 August 1806, after the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon, before 1157, the realm was merely referred to as the Roman Empire. In a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, by the end of the 18th century, the term Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had fallen out of official use. As Roman power in Gaul declined during the 5th century, local Germanic tribes assumed control, by the middle of the 8th century, however, the Merovingians had been reduced to figureheads, and the Carolingians, led by Charles Martel, had become the de facto rulers. In 751, Martel’s son Pepin became King of the Franks, the Carolingians would maintain a close alliance with the Papacy. In 768 Pepin’s son Charlemagne became King of the Franks and began an expansion of the realm. He eventually incorporated the territories of present-day France, Germany, northern Italy, on Christmas Day of 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, restoring the title in the west for the first time in over three centuries. After the death of Charles the Fat in 888, however, the Carolingian Empire broke apart, according to Regino of Prüm, the parts of the realm spewed forth kinglets, and each part elected a kinglet from its own bowels. After the death of Charles the Fat, those crowned emperor by the pope controlled only territories in Italy, the last such emperor was Berengar I of Italy, who died in 924. Around 900, autonomous stem duchies reemerged in East Francia, on his deathbed, Conrad yielded the crown to his main rival, Henry the Fowler of Saxony, who was elected king at the Diet of Fritzlar in 919. Henry reached a truce with the raiding Magyars, and in 933 he won a first victory against them in the Battle of Riade, Henry died in 936, but his descendants, the Liudolfing dynasty, would continue to rule the Eastern kingdom for roughly a century. Upon Henry the Fowlers death, Otto, his son and designated successor, was elected King in Aachen in 936 and he overcame a series of revolts from an elder brother and from several dukes. After that, the managed to control the appointment of dukes. In 951, Otto came to the aid of Adelaide, the queen of Italy, defeating her enemies, marrying her. In 955, Otto won a victory over the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld

2.
German Confederation
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Most historians have judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. It collapsed due to the rivalry between Prussia and Austria, warfare, the 1848 revolution, and the inability of the members to compromise. In 1848, revolutions by liberals and nationalists were an attempt to establish a unified German state. Talks between the German states failed in 1848, and the Confederation briefly dissolved, but was re-established shortly after and it decidedly fell apart only after the Prussian victory in the Seven Weeks War of 1866. This led to the creation of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership in 1867, a number of South German states remained independent until they joined the North German Confederation, which was renamed the German Empire. The War of the Third Coalition lasted from about 1803 to 1806, following defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz by the French under Napoleon in December 1805, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated, and the Empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806. The resulting Treaty of Pressburg established the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, after the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt of October 1806 in the War of the Fourth Coalition, various other German states, including Saxony and Westphalia, also joined the Confederation. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish Holstein, Swedish Pomerania and the French-occupied Principality of Erfurt stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine and these nations would later join in the War of the Sixth Coalition from 1812 to 1814. The German Confederation was created by the 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition. The Confederation was formally created by a treaty, the Final Act of the Ministerial Conference to Complete and Consolidate the Organization of the German Confederation. This treaty was not concluded and signed by the parties until 15 May 1820, States joined the German Confederation by becoming parties to the second treaty. The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. In the Prague peace treaty, on 23 August 1866, Austria had to accept that the Confederation was considered to be dissolved, the following day, the remaining member states confirmed the dissolution. The treaty allowed Prussia to create a new Bundesverhältnis in the North of Germany, the South German states were proposed to create a South German Confederation but this did not come into existence. Prussia and its allies created the North German Confederation in 1867, because of French intervention it had to exclude, besides Austria, the South German states Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt. During November 1870 the four states joined the North German Confederation by treaty. The North German Confederation Reichstag and Bundesrat accepted to rename the North German Confederation as the German Empire, the new constitution of the state, the Constitution of the German Confederation, introduced the new name and title on 1 January 1871. The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia were the largest, Austria and Prussia each had one vote in the Federal Assembly

3.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form

4.
Imperial Estate
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An Imperial State or Imperial Estate was a part of the Holy Roman Empire with representation and the right to vote in the Imperial Diet. Rulers of these Estates were able to exercise significant rights and privileges and were immediate and they were thus able to rule their territories with a considerable degree of autonomy. The system of imperial states replaces the regular division of Germany into stem duchies in the early medieval period. From 1489, the imperial Estates represented in the Diet were divided into three chambers, the college of prince-electors, the college of imperial princes and the college of imperial cities. Counts and nobles were not directly represented in the Diet in spite of their immediate status, Imperial knights had immediate status but were unrepresented in the Diet. Imperial Estates could be either ecclesiastic or secular, the secular Estates, most notably, the four Prince-Electors of the County Palatine of the Rhine, Saxony, Brandenburg and Bohemia, later also Bavaria and Hanover. Imperial Princes including Grand Dukes, Dukes, Counts Palatine, Margraves and Landgraves, Reichsgrafen the Free, until 1582 the votes of the Free and Imperial Cities were only advisory. None of the rulers below the Holy Roman Emperor ranked as kings, the status of Estate was normally attached to a particular territory within the Empire, but there were some reichsständische Personalisten, or persons with imperial statehood. Originally, the Emperor alone could grant that status, but in 1653, the creation of a new Estate required the assent of the College of Electors and of the College of Princes. The ruler was required to agree to accept imperial taxation and military obligations, furthermore, the Estate was required to obtain admittance into one of the Imperial Circles. Theoretically, personalist Estates were forbidden after 1653, but exceptions were often made, once a territory attained the status of an Estate, it could lose that status under very few circumstances. A territory ceded to a foreign power ceased to be an Estate, from 1648 onwards, inheritance of the Estate was limited to one family, a territory inherited by a different family ceased to be an Estate unless the Emperor explicitly allowed otherwise. Finally, a territory could cease to be an imperial Estate by being subjected to the Imperial ban, in the German mediatization between 1803 and 1806, the vast majority of the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire were mediatised. They lost their imperial immediacy and became part of other Estates, the number of Estates was reduced from about three hundred to about thirty. Mediatisation went along with secularisation, the abolition of most of the ecclesiastical Estates and this dissolution of the constitution of the structure of the empire was soon followed by the dissolution of the empire itself, in 1806. Rulers of Imperial States enjoyed precedence over other subjects in the Empire, Electors were originally styled Durchlaucht, princes Hochgeboren and counts Hoch- und Wohlgeboren. In the eighteenth century, the electors were upgraded to Durchläuchtigste, princes to Durchlaucht, Imperial States enjoyed several rights and privileges. Rulers had autonomy inasmuch as their families were concerned, in particular and they were permitted to make treaties and enter into alliances with other Imperial States as well as with foreign nations

5.
Imperial immediacy
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As confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia, the possession of imperial immediacy came with a particular form of territorial authority known as territorial superiority. In todays terms, it would be understood as a form of sovereignty. They formed the Imperial Estates, together with roughly 100 immediate counts,40 Imperial prelates and 50 Imperial Cities who only enjoyed a collective vote. Additional advantages might include the rights to collect taxes and tolls, to hold a market, to mint coins, to bear arms, the last of these might include the so-called Blutgericht through which capital punishment could be administered. These rights varied according to the patents granted by the emperor. Immediate rights might be lost if the Emperor and/or the Imperial Diet could not defend them against external aggression, as occurred in the French Revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 required the emperor to renounce all claims to the portions of the Holy Roman Empire west of the Rhine. The practical application of the rights of immediacy was complex, this makes the history of the Holy Roman Empire particularly difficult to understand, even such contemporaries as Goethe and Fichte called the Empire a monstrosity. Prussian historian Heinrich von Treitschke described it in the 19th century as having become a mess of rotted imperial forms. Pointing out that people like Goethe meant monster as a compliment in modern understanding, free Imperial City German mediatization Imperial Abbey Imperial Estate Imperial Village List of states of the Holy Roman Empire Braun, B. Reichsunmittelbarkeit in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2005-05-03

6.
High, middle and low justice
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Low justice regards the level of day-to-day civil actions, including voluntary justice, minor pleas, and petty offences generally settled by fines or light corporal punishment. It was held by many petty authorities, including lords of the manor, who sat in justice over the serfs, unfree tenants. As a rule, each court administered justice in general, as long as the matter was not reserved for a court or by virtue of some privilegium fori. In addition to civil and criminal trials, the notion of justice also included voluntary justice, a right of appeal was not automatically available, only when explicitly established, and if so not always to a court of the superior political level and/or a higher degree of our trio. In the early Holy Roman Empire, high justice was reserved to the king, from the 13th century, it was transferred to the kings vassals along with their fiefs. The first codification of capital punishment was the Halsgerichtsordnung passed by Maximilian I in 1499, both codes formed the basis of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, passed in 1532 under Charles V. In the Habsburg Monarchy, all codes were superseded by the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana in 1768. The Blutbanner or Blutfahne was a red flag. It was presented to feudal lords as a symbol of their power of high jurisdiction together with the banner of the fief. Some feudal houses adopted a red field symbolic of the banner into their coat of arms. The Talschaft of Schwyz used the banner as a war flag from ca. 1240, and was incorporated into the flag of Schwyz. Often it is displayed, in the form of relevant status symbols. Thus permanent gallows are often erected in prominent public places, the word for them in French. These privileges indicating its so-called liberty was an enclave in the territorial jurisdiction of the neighboring feudal Lord. Not every Vogt held high justice, up to the 18th century, for example, the blood court of much of what is now the canton of Zürich lay with Kyburg, even in the territory ruled by the counts of Greifensee. The self-administration of the court was an important factor of Imperial immediacy. Private jurisdiction Zwing und Bann Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution, Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987, Oxford University Press

7.
French Revolution
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Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, the causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War, the French government was deeply in debt, Years of bad harvests leading up to the Revolution also inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and the aristocracy. Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment ideals and contributed to the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789, a central event of the first stage, in August 1789, was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules and privileges left over from the Ancien Régime. The next few years featured political struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the intent on thwarting major reforms. The Republic was proclaimed in September 1792 after the French victory at Valmy, in a momentous event that led to international condemnation, Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution, internally, popular agitation radicalised the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. Large numbers of civilians were executed by revolutionary tribunals during the Terror, after the Thermidorian Reaction, an executive council known as the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795. The rule of the Directory was characterised by suspended elections, debt repudiations, financial instability, persecutions against the Catholic clergy, dogged by charges of corruption, the Directory collapsed in a coup led by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution, almost all future revolutionary movements looked back to the Revolution as their predecessor. The values and institutions of the Revolution dominate French politics to this day, the French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies and it became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread of liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, socialism, feminism, and secularism, among many others. The Revolution also witnessed the birth of total war by organising the resources of France, historians have pointed to many events and factors within the Ancien Régime that led to the Revolution. Over the course of the 18th century, there emerged what the philosopher Jürgen Habermas called the idea of the sphere in France. A perfect example would be the Palace of Versailles which was meant to overwhelm the senses of the visitor and convince one of the greatness of the French state and Louis XIV. Starting in the early 18th century saw the appearance of the sphere which was critical in that both sides were active. In France, the emergence of the public sphere outside of the control of the saw the shift from Versailles to Paris as the cultural capital of France. In the 1750s, during the querelle des bouffons over the question of the quality of Italian vs, in 1782, Louis-Sébastien Mercier wrote, The word court no longer inspires awe amongst us as in the time of Louis XIV

8.
Free imperial city
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The evolution of some German cities into self-ruling constitutional entities of the Empire was slower than that of the secular and ecclesiastical princes. In the course of the 13th and 14th centuries, some cities were promoted by the emperor to the status of Imperial Cities, essentially for fiscal reasons. The Free Cities were those, such as Basel, Augsburg, Cologne or Strasbourg, like the other Imperial Estates, they could wage war, make peace, and control their own trade, and they permitted little interference from outside. In the later Middle Ages, a number of Free Cities formed City Leagues, such as the Hanseatic League or the Alsatian Décapole, to promote and defend their interests. In the course of the Middle Ages, cities gained, and sometimes — if rarely — lost, some favored cities gained a charter by gift. Others purchased one from a prince in need of funds, some won it by force of arms during the troubled 13th and 14th centuries and other lost their privileges during the same period by the same way. Some cities became free through the created by the extinction of dominant families. Some voluntarily placed themselves under the protection of a territorial ruler, a few, like Protestant Donauwörth, which in 1607 was annexed to the Catholic Duchy of Bavaria, were stripped by the Emperor of their status as a Free City — for genuine or trumped-up reasons. There were approximately four thousand towns and cities in the Empire, during the late Middle Ages, fewer than two hundred of these places ever enjoyed the status of Free Imperial Cities, and some of those did so only for a few decades. The military tax register of 1521 listed eighty-five such cities, from the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 to 1803, their number oscillated at around fifty. These cities were located in small territories where the ruler was weak. They were nevertheless the exception among the multitude of territorial towns, Cities of both latter categories normally had representation in territorial diets, but not in the Imperial Diet. The cities divided themselves into two groups, or benches, in the Imperial Diet, the Rhenish and the Swabian Bench. To avoid the possibility that they would have the vote in case of a tie between the Electors and the Princes, it was decided that these should decide first and consult the cities afterward. Constitutionally, if in no way, the diminutive Free Imperial City of Isny was the equal of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. Instead, many found it more profitable to maintain agents at the Aulic Council in Vienna. At the opposite end, the authority of Cologne, Aachen, Worms, Goslar, Wetzlar and they were the most economically significant burgher families who had asserted themselves politically over time. The burgher status was usually a privilege renewed pro-forma in each generation of the family concerned

9.
Kleinstaaterei
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Estimates of the total number of German states at any given time during the 18th century vary, ranging from 294 to 348 or more. Furthermore, many German states were composed of two or more parts, often politically united through a marriage. Most states had at least one or two enclaves or exclaves, and some considerably more, during the early modern period, these small states modernised their military, judicial, and economic administrations. These hardly existed at the level, and the emperor was little more than a feudalistic confederal figurehead. After the Reformation, the Empires small states were divided along religious lines and those headed by Roman Catholic dynasties faced those ruled by Protestant dynasties in the Thirty Years War and other conflicts. After French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte forced the Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II, to dissolve the Empire in 1806, Kleinstaaterei was altered and this confederation did not survive Napoleons military defeat at the hands of the allies, but the previous principalities were not entirely restored. Prussia and the Austrian Empire—the successor state to the Habsburg Monarchy—were the only major German powers, the resulting territorial division resulted in a consolidated version—around 40 states—of the pre-Napoleonic Kleinstaaterei. The rise of nationalism across Europe brought movements striving for nation-states, German nationalists began to insist on a unified Germany. The founding of the German Empire created a largely German nation-state, the unification of the German Empire put Germany on the map as a major European power, albeit too late to become a major colonial presence. The decentralised nature of Kleinstaaterei made it difficult for the German economy to live up to its potential, varying systems of weights and measures, different currencies and numerous tariffs impeded trade and investment, although the creation of the German Customs Union had begun to lift these barriers. The startling rapidity of Germanys economic growth after unification under Bismarck provided further evidence that the Kleinstaaterei had been economically repressive, the system did contribute to cultural diversity within Germany, and the numerous rival courts—though usually politically insignificant—often gained some renown through patronage. Balkanisation German Mediatisation List of participants in the Reichstag of 1792 List of states in the Holy Roman Empire

10.
Hohenstaufen
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The Hohenstaufen, also called the Staufer or Staufen, were a dynasty of German kings during the Middle Ages. Besides Germany, they ruled the Kingdom of Sicily. In Italian historiography, they are known as the Svevi, since they were dukes of Swabia from 1079, three members of the dynasty—Frederick I, Henry VI and Frederick II—were crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The name Staufen derives from Stauf, meaning chalice, and was applied to conical hills in Swabia in the Middle Ages. The family derives its name from the castle which the first Swabian duke of the lineage built there in the half of the 11th century. Staufen castle was finally called Hohenstaufen by historians in the 19th century. The name of the dynasty followed, but in recent decades the trend in German historiography has been to prefer the name Staufer, the noble family first appeared in the late 10th century in the Swabian Riesgau region around the former Carolingian court of Nördlingen. A local count Frederick is mentioned as progenitor in a pedigree drawn up by Abbot Wibald of Stavelot at the behest of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa in 1153. He held the office of a Swabian count palatine, his son Frederick of Buren married Hildegard of Egisheim-Dagsburg and their son Frederick I was appointed Duke of Swabia at Hohenstaufen Castle by the Salian king Henry IV of Germany in 1079. At the same time, Duke Frederick I was engaged to the kings approximately seventeen-year-old daughter, Fredericks brother Otto was elevated to the Strasbourg bishopric in 1082. Upon Fredericks death, he was succeeded by his son, Duke Frederick II, Frederick II remained a close ally of the Salians, he and his younger brother Conrad were named the kings representatives in Germany when the king was in Italy. Around 1120, Frederick II married Judith of Bavaria from the rival House of Welf, when the last male member of the Salian dynasty, Emperor Henry V, died without heirs in 1125, a controversy arose about the succession. A civil war between Fredericks dynasty and Lothairs ended with Fredericks submission in 1134, after Lothairs death in 1137, Fredericks brother Conrad was elected King as Conrad III. In 1147, Conrad heard Bernard of Clairvaux preach the Second Crusade at Speyer, conrads brother Duke Frederick II died in 1147, and was succeeded in Swabia by his son, Duke Frederick III. When King Conrad III died without heir in 1152, Frederick also succeeded him. As royal access to the resources of the church in Germany was much reduced and he was soon crowned emperor in Italy, but decades of warfare on the peninsula yielded scant results. The Papacy and the prosperous city-states of the Lombard League in northern Italy were traditional enemies, under the skilled leadership of Pope Alexander III, the alliance suffered many defeats but ultimately was able to deny the emperor a complete victory in Italy. During Fredericks long stays in Italy, the German princes became stronger, offers of reduced taxes and manorial duties enticed many Germans to settle in the east in the course of the Ostsiedlung

11.
Peace of Westphalia
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The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster, effectively ending the European wars of religion. The Treaty of Osnabrück, involving the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, the treaties did not restore peace throughout Europe, but they did create a basis for national self-determination. Inter-state aggression was to be held in check by a balance of power, a norm was established against interference in another states domestic affairs. As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles, especially the concept of states, became central to international law. Peace negotiations between France and the Habsburgs, provided by the Holy Roman Emperor and the Spanish King, were started in Cologne in 1641 and these negotiations were initially blocked by France. Cardinal Richelieu of France desired the inclusion of all its allies, in Hamburg and Lübeck, Sweden and the Holy Roman Empire negotiated the Treaty of Hamburg. This was done with the intervention of Richelieu, the Holy Roman Empire and Sweden declared the preparations of Cologne and the Treaty of Hamburg to be preliminaries of an overall peace agreement. This larger agreement was negotiated in Westphalia, in the cities of Münster. Both cities were maintained as neutral and demilitarized zones for the negotiations, Münster was, since its re-Catholization in 1535, a strictly mono-denominational community. It housed the Chapter of the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, only Roman Catholic worship was permitted. No places of worship were provided for Calvinists and Lutherans, in the years of 1628–1633 Osnabrück had been subjugated by troops of the Catholic League. The Catholic Prince-Bishop Franz Wilhelm, Count of Wartenberg then imposed the Counter-Reformation onto the city with many Lutheran burgher families being exiled, while under Swedish occupation Osnabrückss Catholics were not expelled, but the city severely suffered from Swedish war contributions. Therefore, Osnabrück hoped for a great relief becoming neutralised and demilitarised, since Lutheran Sweden preferred Osnabrück as a conference venue, its peace negotiations with the Empire, including the allies of both sides, took place in Osnabrück. The Empire and its opponent France, including the allies of each, as well as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, between January 1646 and July 1647 probably the largest number of diplomats were present. The French delegation was headed by Henri II dOrléans, duc de Longueville and further comprised the diplomats Claude dAvaux, the Swedish delegation was headed by Count Johan Oxenstierna and was assisted by Baron Johan Adler Salvius. Philip IV of Spain was represented by a double delegation, the Spanish delegation was headed by Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, and notably included the diplomats and writers Diego de Saavedra Fajardo, and Bernardino de Rebolledo. The Burgundian lawyer Antoine Brun represented Philip as hereditary ruler of the Franche Comté, the papal nuncio in Cologne, Fabio Chigi, and the Venetian envoy Alvise Contarini acted as mediators. Various Imperial States of the Holy Roman Empire also sent delegations, Brandenburg sent several representatives, including Vollmar

12.
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor
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Frederick II was a Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily in the Middle Ages, a member of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, however, his enemies, especially the popes, prevailed, and his dynasty collapsed soon after his death. As such, he was King of Germany, of Italy, at the age of three, he was crowned King of Sicily as a co-ruler with his mother, Constance of Hauteville, the daughter of Roger II of Sicily. His other royal title was King of Jerusalem by virtue of marriage, Pope Gregory IX went so far as to call him an Antichrist. Speaking six languages, Frederick was a patron of science. He played a role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His Sicilian royal court in Palermo, from around 1220 to his death, saw the first use of a form of an Italo-Romance language. The poetry that emanated from the school had a significant influence on literature and he was also the first king who explicitly outlawed trials by ordeal as they were considered irrational. After his death, his line died out and the House of Hohenstaufen came to an end. Born in Iesi, near Ancona, Italy, Frederick was the son of the emperor Henry VI and he was known as the puer Apuliae. Some chronicles say that his mother, the forty-year-old Constance, gave birth to him in a square in order to forestall any doubt about his origin. In 1196 at Frankfurt am Main the infant Frederick was elected King of the Germans and his rights in Germany were disputed by Henrys brother Philip of Swabia and Otto of Brunswick. At the death of his father in 1197, Frederick was in Italy travelling towards Germany when the bad news reached his guardian, Conrad of Spoleto. Frederick was hastily brought back to his mother Constance in Palermo, Sicily, Constance of Sicily was in her own right queen of Sicily, and she established herself as regent. Upon Constances death in 1198, Pope Innocent III succeeded as Fredericks guardian, Fredericks tutor during this period was Cencio, who would become Pope Honorius III. However, Markward of Annweiler, with the support of Henrys brother, Philip of Swabia, reclaimed the regency for himself, in 1200, with the help of Genoese ships, he landed in Sicily and one year later seized the young Frederick. He thus ruled Sicily until 1202, when he was succeeded by another German captain, William of Capparone, Frederick was subsequently under tutor Walter of Palearia, until, in 1208, he was declared of age. His first task was to reassert his power over Sicily and southern Italy, Otto of Brunswick had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Innocent III in 1209

13.
Ottonian dynasty
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The Ottonian dynasty was a Saxon dynasty of German monarchs, named after its first Emperor Otto I, but also known as the Saxon dynasty after the familys origin in the German stem duchy of Saxony. The family itself is sometimes known as the Liudolfings, after its earliest known member Count Liudolf. The Ottonian rulers were successors of the Carolingian dynasty in East Francia, in the 9th century, the Saxon count Liudolf held large estates on the Leine river west of the Harz mountain range and in the adjacent Eichsfeld territory of Thuringia. His ancestors probably acted as ministeriales in the Saxon stem duchy, Liudolf married Oda, a member of the Frankish House of Billung. About 852 the couple together with Bishop Altfrid of Hildesheim founded Brunshausen Abbey, Liudolf already held the high social position of a Saxon dux, documented by the marriage of his daughter Liutgard with Louis the Younger, son of the Carolingian king Louis the German in 869. Liudolfs sons Bruno and Otto the Illustrious ruled over parts of Saxon Eastphalia, moreover. He married Hedwiga, a daughter of the Babenberg duke Henry of Franconia, upon Ottos death in 912, his son Henry the Fowler succeeded him as Duke of Saxony. Henry had married Matilda of Ringelheim, a descendant of the legendary Saxon ruler Widukind, while East Francia under the rule of the last Carolingian kings was ravaged by Hungarian invasions, he rose to a primus inter pares among the German dukes. In 933 he led a German army to victory over the Hungarian forces at the Battle of Riade, by succession regulation, he transferred the power to his second son Otto I, who acceded to an undivided heritage. Otto I, Duke of Saxony upon the death of his father in 936, was elected king within a few weeks. He continued the work of unifying all of the German tribes into a single kingdom, through strategic marriages and personal appointments, he installed members of his own family to the kingdoms most important duchies. This, however, did not prevent his relatives from entering into civil war, Otto was able to suppress their uprisings, in consequence, the various dukes, who had previously been co-equals with the king, were reduced into royal subjects under the kings authority. His decisive victory over the Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 ended the Hungarian invasions of Europe, the defeat of the pagan Magyars earned King Otto the reputation as the savior of Christendom and the epithet the Great. He transformed the Church in Germany into a kind of church and major royal power base to which he donated charity. By 961, Otto had conquered the Kingdom of Italy, which was an inheritance that none wanted, and extended his kingdoms borders to the north, east. In control of much of central and southern Europe, the patronage of Otto and his immediate successors caused a cultural renaissance of the arts. He even reached a settlement with the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes by marrying his son, in 968 he established the Archbishopric of Magdeburg at his long-time residence. Co-ruler with his father since 961 and crowned emperor in 967, by excluding the Bavarian line of Ottonians from the line of succession, he strengthened Imperial authority and secured his own sons succession to the Imperial throne

14.
Salian dynasty
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The Salian dynasty, was a dynasty in the High Middle Ages. He was elected German King in 1024 and crowned Holy Roman Emperor on 26 March 1027. The four Salian kings of the dynasty—Conrad II, Henry III, Henry IV, and Henry V—ruled the Holy Roman Empire from 1027 to 1125 and they achieved the development of a permanent administrative system based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown. Werner of Worms and his son Duke Conrad the Red of Lorraine, Conrad the Red married Liutgarde, a daughter of Emperor Otto I. Their son Otto I, Duke of Carinthia ruled Carinthia from 978 to 1004, Duke Otto had three sons, Bruno, who became Pope Gregory V, Conrad, and Henry, count of Speyer. Henry was the father of the first Salian Emperor Conrad II, Pope Leo IX also had family ties to the dynasty, since his grandfather Hugo III was the brother of Adelheid, the grandmother of Henry III. After the death of the last Saxon Emperor Henry II the first Salian regent Conrad II was elected by the majority of the Prince-electors and was crowned German king in Mainz on 8 September 1024. Early in 1026 Conrad went to Milan, where Ariberto, archbishop of Milan, when Rudolph III, King of Burgundy died 1032, Conrad II also claimed this kingship on the basis of an inheritance Henry II had extorted from the former in 1006. Despite some opposition, the Burgundian and Provençal nobles paid homage to Conrad in Zürich in 1034 and this Kingdom of Burgundy would become known as the Kingdom of Arles under Conrads successors. Already in 1028 Conrad II had his son Henry III elected and anointed king of Germany, henrys tenure led to an overstatement of previously unknown sacral kingship. So during this reign Speyer Cathedral was expanded to be the largest church in Western Christendom, henrys conception of a legitimate power of royal disposition in the duchies was successful against the dukes, and thus secured royal control. However, in Lorraine, this led to years of conflict, but also in southern Germany a powerful opposition group was formed in the years 1052–1055. 1046 Henry ended the schism, freed the Papacy from dependence on the Roman nobility. His early death in 1056 was long regarded as a disaster for the Empire, the early Salians owed much of their success to their alliance with the Church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes. In time, however, the Church came to regret this close relationship, the pope also attacked the concept of monarchy by divine right and gained the support of significant elements of the German nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism. More important, the pope forbade ecclesiastical officials under pain of excommunication to support Henry as they had so freely done in the past, in the end, Henry IV journeyed to Canossa in northern Italy in 1077 to do penance and to receive absolution from the pope. However, he resumed the practice of lay investiture and arranged the election of an antipope in 1080, the monarchs struggle with the papacy resulted in a war that ravaged through the Holy Roman Empire from 1077 until the Concordat of Worms in 1122. The reign of the last ruler of the Salian dynasty Henry V coincided with the phase of the great Investiture Controversy

15.
Diocese
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The word diocese is derived from the Greek term διοίκησις meaning administration. When now used in a sense, it refers to a territorial unit of administration. This structure of governance is known as episcopal polity. The word diocesan means relating or pertaining to a diocese and it can also be used as a noun meaning the bishop who has the principal supervision of a diocese. An archdiocese is more significant than a diocese, an archdiocese is presided over by an archbishop whose see may have or have had importance due to size or historical significance. The archbishop may have authority over any other suffragan bishops. In the Latter Day Saint movement, the bishopric is used to describe the bishop himself. Especially in the Middle Ages, some bishops held political as well as religious authority within their dioceses, in the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associated in a larger unit, the diocese. With the adoption of Christianity as the Empires official religion in the 4th century, a formal church hierarchy was set up, parallel to the civil administration, whose areas of responsibility often coincided. With the collapse of the Western Empire in the 5th century, a similar, though less pronounced, development occurred in the East, where the Roman administrative apparatus was largely retained by the Byzantine Empire. In modern times, many dioceses, though later subdivided, have preserved the boundaries of a long-vanished Roman administrative division, modern usage of diocese tends to refer to the sphere of a bishops jurisdiction. As of January 2015, in the Catholic Church there are 2,851 regular dioceses,1 papal see,641 archdioceses and 2,209 dioceses in the world, in the Eastern rites in communion with the Pope, the equivalent unit is called an eparchy. Eastern Orthodoxy calls dioceses metropoleis in the Greek tradition or eparchies in the Slavic tradition, after the Reformation, the Church of England retained the existing diocesan structure which remains throughout the Anglican Communion. The one change is that the areas administered under the Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York are properly referred to as provinces and this usage is relatively common in the Anglican Communion. Certain Lutheran denominations such as the Church of Sweden do have individual dioceses similar to Roman Catholics and these dioceses and archdioceses are under the government of a bishop. Other Lutheran bodies and synods that have dioceses and bishops include the Church of Denmark, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, the Evangelical Church in Germany, rather, it is divided into a middle judicatory. The Lutheran Church-International, based in Springfield, Illinois, presently uses a traditional diocesan structure and its current president is Archbishop Robert W. Hotes. The Church of God in Christ has dioceses throughout the United States, in the COGIC, each state is divided up into at least three dioceses that are all led by a bishop, but some states as many as seven dioceses

16.
Investiture Controversy
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The Investiture Controversy or Investiture Contest was a conflict between Church and state in medieval Europe. In the 11th and 12th centuries, a series of popes challenged the authority of European monarchies, at issue was who, the pope or monarchs, had the authority to appoint local church officials such as bishops of cities and abbots of monasteries. The conflict ended in 1122, when Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II agreed on the Concordat of Worms and it differentiated between the royal and spiritual powers and gave the emperors a limited role in selecting bishops. The outcome seemed mostly a victory for the Pope and his claim that he was Gods chief representative in the world, however, the Emperor did retain considerable power over the Church. The investiture controversy began as a struggle between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. By undercutting the Imperial power established by the Salian emperors, the led to nearly 50 years of civil war in Germany. Imperial power was finally re-established under the Hohenstaufen dynasty, historian Norman Cantor, The age of the investiture controversy may rightly be regarded as the turning-point in medieval civilization. After the decline of the Roman Empire, and prior to the Investiture Controversy, while theoretically a task of the church, many bishops and abbots were themselves usually part of the ruling nobility. Since the eldest son would inherit the title, siblings often found careers in the church and this was particularly true where the family may have established a proprietary church or abbey on their estate. Since Otto the Great the bishops had been princes of the empire, had secured many privileges, the control of these great units of economic and military power was for the king a question of primary importance, affecting as it did imperial authority. It was essential for a ruler or nobleman to appoint someone who would remain loyal. e, the Holy Roman Emperor and placing that power wholly within control of the church. An opportunity came in 1056 when Henry IV became German king at six years of age, the reformers seized the opportunity to take the papacy by force while he was still a child and could not react. Once Rome regained control of the election of the pope, it was ready to attack the practice of investiture, in 1075, Pope Gregory VII composed the Dictatus Papae. One clause asserted that the deposal of an emperor was under the power of the pope. By this time, Henry IV was no longer a child and it called for the election of a new pope. His letter ends, I, Henry, king by the grace of God, with all of my Bishops, say to you, come down, and is often quoted with and to be damned throughout the ages. In 1076 Gregory responded by excommunicating Henry, and deposed him as German king, releasing all Christians from their oath of allegiance, enforcing these declarations was a different matter, but the advantage gradually came to be on the side of Gregory VII. German princes and the aristocracy were happy to hear of the kings deposition and they used religious reasons to continue the rebellion started at the First Battle of Langensalza in 1075, and for seizure of royal holdings

17.
Counter-Reformation
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It also involved political activities that included the Roman Inquisition. The 14th, 15th and 16th centuries saw a revival in Europe. This became known as the Catholic Reformation, several theologians harked back to the early days of Christianity and questioned their spirituality. Their debates expanded across the whole of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, whilst secular critics also examined religious practice, clerical behavior, several varied currents of thought were active, but the ideas of reform and renewal were led by the clergy. The reforms decreed at Lateran V had only a small effect, some positions got further and further from the churchs official positions, leading to the break with Rome and the formation of Protestant churches. Even so, conservative and reforming parties still survived within the Catholic Church even as the Protestant Reformation spread, the Protestant Church decisively broke from the Catholic Church in the 1520s. The two distinct positions within the Catholic Church solidified in the 1560s. The Catholic Reformation became known as the Counter-Reformation, defined as a reaction to Protestantism rather than as a reform movement, the regular orders made their first attempts at reform in the 14th century. The Benedictine Bull of 1336 reformed the Benedictines and Cistercians, in 1523, the Camaldolese Hermits of Monte Corona were recognized as a separate congregation of monks. In 1435, Saint Francis of Paola founded the Poor Hermits of Saint Francis of Assisi, in 1526, Matteo de Bascio suggested reforming the Franciscan rule of life to its original purity, giving birth to the Capuchins, recognized by the pope in 1619. This order was well-known to the laity and play an important role in public preaching, to respond to the new needs of evangelism, clergy formed into religious congregations, taking special vows but with no obligation to assist in a monasterys religious offices. These regular clergy taught, preached and took confession but were under a bishops direct authority, in Italy, the first congregation of regular clergy was the Theatines founded in 1524 by Gaetano and Cardinal Caraffa. In 1524, a number of priests in Rome began to live in a community centred on Philip Neri, the Oratorians were given their institutions in 1564 and recognized as an order by the pope in 1575. They used music and singing to attract the faithful, the Council upheld the basic structure of the Medieval Church, its sacramental system, religious orders, and doctrine. It rejected all compromise with the Protestants, restating basic tenets of the Roman Catholic faith, the Council upheld salvation appropriated by grace through faith and works of that faith because faith without works is dead, as the Epistle of St. James states. This reaffirmed the previous Council of Rome and Synods of Carthage, the Council also commissioned the Roman Catechism, which still serves as authoritative Church teaching. While the traditional fundamentals of the Church were reaffirmed, there were changes to answer complaints that the Counter-Reformers were, tacitly. Often, these rural priests did not know Latin and lacked opportunities for theological training

18.
Thirty Years' War
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The Thirty Years War was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, as well as the deadliest European religious war, resulting in eight million casualties. Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers. These states employed relatively large mercenary armies, and the war became less about religion, in the 17th century, religious beliefs and practices were a much larger influence on an average European than they are today. The war began when the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, tried to impose uniformity on his domains. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose that had granted in the Peace of Augsburg. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and relatively intolerant when compared to his predecessor and his policies were considered strongly pro-Catholic. They ousted the Habsburgs and elected Frederick V, Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate as their monarch, Frederick took the offer without the support of the union. The southern states, mainly Roman Catholic, were angered by this, led by Bavaria, these states formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor. The Empire soon crushed this rebellion in the Battle of White Mountain. After the atrocities committed in Bohemia, Saxony finally gave its support to the union, Spain, wishing to finally crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs. Both mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies traditionally looted or extorted tribute to get operating funds, the war also bankrupted most of the combatant powers. The Thirty Years War ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, the war altered the previous political order of European powers. Lutherans living in a prince-bishopric could continue to practice their faith, Lutherans could keep the territory they had taken from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau in 1552. Those prince-bishops who had converted to Lutheranism were required to give up their territories and this added a third major faith to the region, but its position was not recognized in any way by the Augsburg terms, to which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties. The Dutch revolted against Spanish domination during the 1560s, leading to a war of independence that led to a truce only in 1609. This dynastic concern overtook religious ones and led to Catholic Frances participation on the otherwise Protestant side of the war, Sweden and Denmark-Norway were interested in gaining control over northern German states bordering the Baltic Sea

19.
Archbishopric of Bremen
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The Archdiocese of Bremen is a historical Roman Catholic diocese and formed from 1180 to 1648 an ecclesiastical state, named Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen within the Holy Roman Empire. The prince-archbishopric consisted of about a third of the diocesan territory, the city of Bremen was de facto and de jure not part of the prince-archbishopric but belonged to the archdiocese. Most of the prince-archbishopric lay rather in the area to the north of the city of Bremen, between the Weser and Elbe rivers, even more confusingly, parts of the prince-archbishopric belonged in religious respect to the neighbouring diocese of Verden, making up 10% of its diocesan territory. Verden itself had a double identity too—as the diocese of Verden, each prince-bishopric had the status of an Imperial Estate, each of which were represented in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. From 1500 on the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen belonged to the Saxon Circle, the Prince-Bishopric of Verden, on the other hand, belonged to the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian Circle and sent its own representative to the Diet. Even when the two prince-bishoprics were ruled in union, in order to maintain the two seats in the Diet they were never formally united in a real union. The same is true for the collectively governed Duchies of Bremen and Verden which emerged in 1648 from the secularised two prince-bishoprics and these forgeries have drawn a veil before the early history of the Hamburg-Bremen. The foundation of the diocese belongs to the period of the activity of Willehad on the lower Weser. The diocese was conceivably at that time a suffragan of the archbishops of Cologne, when, after the death of Bishop Leuderich, the see was given to Ansgar, it lost its independence, and from that time on was permanently united with the Archdiocese of Hamburg. The new combined see was regarded as the headquarters for work in the Nordic countries. Ansgars successor, Rimbert, the apostle of the north, was troubled by onslaughts first by Normans and then by Wends. Sergius prohibited the chapter at Hamburgs Concathedral to found suffragan dioceses of its own, after the Obodrite destruction of Hamburg in 983 the Hamburg chapter was dispersed. So Archbishop Unwan appointed a new chapter with twelve canons, with three taken from Bremen Cathedral chapter, and the three colleges of Bücken, Harsefeld and Ramelsloh. The see of Hamburg-Bremen attained its greatest prosperity and later had its deepest troubles under Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg and he was after Hamburg-Bremens upgrade to the rank of a Patriarchate of the North and failed completely. Hamburg stopped being used as part of the diocese’s name, the next two archbishops, Liemar and Humbert, were determined opponents of Pope Gregory VII. At the stripping of the Duchy of Saxony in 1180 all of these suffragan bishops achieved for parts of their territories the status of imperially immediate prince-bishoprics. The Bishopric of Livonia was a suffragan of Bremen in the years 1186-1255, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and his allies, many of them vassals and former supporters of his paternal cousin Duke Henry III, the Lion, had defeated the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. In 1180 Frederick I Barbarossa stripped Henry the Lion of his duchies, in 1168 the Saxon clan of the Ascanians, allies of Frederick I Barbarossa, had failed to install their family member Count Siegfried of Anhalt, on the see of Bremen

20.
Archbishopric of Magdeburg
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The Archbishopric of Magdeburg was a Roman Catholic archdiocese and Prince-Archbishopric of the Holy Roman Empire centered on the city of Magdeburg on the Elbe River. All his successors were only administrators of the prince-archbishopric and Lutheran too, in political respect the Erzstift, the archiepiscopal and capitular temporalities, had gained imperial immediacy as prince-archbishopric in 1180. The prince-archbishopric maintained its statehood as a monarchy until 1680. Then Brandenburg-Prussia acquired Magdeburg prince-archbishopric, and after being secularised, transformed it into the Duchy of Magdeburg, the 1994-founded modern Diocese of Magdeburg is a diocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic church located in the German states of Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Saxony. After the wars of the years 940 and 954, when the Polabian Slavs, as far as the Oder, the Magyars had come far into Germany, at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 they were defeated and repelled. Immediately in 955 Otto the Great set to work to establish an archbishopric in Magdeburg and he wished to transfer the capital of the diocese from Halberstadt to Magdeburg, and make it an archdiocese. But this was opposed by the Archbishop of Mainz, who was the metropolitan of Halberstadt. When, in 962, Pope John XII sanctioned the establishment of an archbishopric, the estates belonging to the convents mentioned above were converted into a mensa for the new archbishopric, and the monks transferred to the Berge Convent. The archiepiscopal church made St. Maurice its patron, and in addition received new donations and its ecclesiastical province included the existing dioceses of Brandenburg and Havelberg and the newly founded dioceses of Merseburg, Zeitz, and Meißen. The new archdiocese was close to the border regions of the Holy Roman Empire and Slavic tribes. Then, on 20 April 967, the archbishopric was established at the Synod of Ravenna in the presence of the pope. The first archbishop was Adelbert, a monk of St. Maximins at Trier, afterwards missionary bishop to the Ruthenians. He was elected in the autumn of 968, received the pallium at Rome, the archdiocesan area of Magdeburg was rather small, it comprised the Slavonic districts of Serimunt, Nudizi, Neletici, Nizizi, and half of northern Thuringia, which Halberstadt resigned. The cathedral school especially gained in importance under Adalberts efficient administration, the scholastic Othrich was considered the most learned man of his times. Many eminent men were educated at Magdeburg, Othrich was chosen archbishop after Adalberts death. Gisiler of Merseburg by bribery and fraud obtained possession of the See of Magdeburg, and also succeeded temporarily in grasping the Bishopric of Merseburg. Among successors worthy of mention are the zealous Gero, Werner, who was killed in battle with Henry IV, St. Norbert, prominent in the 12th century, Archbishop Wichmann was more important as a sovereign and prince of the Holy Roman Empire than as a bishop. Albrecht II quarrelled with Otto II, Margrave of Brandenburg, because he had pronounced the ban against the latter

21.
Bishopric of Hildesheim
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The Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim was a state of the Holy Roman Empire from the Middle Ages until 1803. It was the territory of princely rule held by the incumbents of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hildesheim, therefore wielding secular and it was named after its capital, Hildesheim. After the Duchy of Saxony had been conquered by the Frankish Kingdom, Emperor Charlemagne in 800 founded a diocese at his eastphalian court in Elze. His son King Louis the Pious established the bishopric at Hildesheim in 815, according to legend delivered by the Brothers Grimm, the king was hunting in the wintery woods of Elze, when he realized that he had lost his pendant with the relic of Blessed Virgin Mary. Distraught he sent out his attendance who finally discovered a flowering rose bush with the relic in his branches, Louis had a chapel built by the side of the rose, the later St. Marys Cathedral. A rosa canina is still growing at the apse of the cathedral and his son King Louis the German appointed the famous former archbishop of Rheims, Ebbo, as bishop between 845 and 847. Ebbos successor Altfrid began the construction of the cathedral, the groundplan of which has not been changed since then, Bishop Bernward and his successor Gotthard added much to the architectonic and cultural tradition of the present-day World Heritage Site. At the Reichstag at Mainz of August 15,1235 Bishop Conrad II reached the acknowledgement of Hildesheim as a Prince-bishopric by Emperor Frederick II. In the 16th century, most of the diocese as well as most of the state of Hildesheim switched to Protestantism, during the German Mediatisation of 1803, Hildesheim lost its statehood, and the territory was first given to Prussia. Four years later, however, Prussia lost it to the newly established Kingdom of Westphalia, the Congress of Vienna of 1815 gave the territory to the Kingdom of Hanover. Ernest Ferdinand Maximilian Henry Joseph Clemens Clemens August List of Bishops of Hildesheim Official site Map of Lower Saxony in 1789

22.
Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn
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The Prince-Bishopric of Paderborn was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire from 1281 to 1802. The Diocese of Paderborn was founded in 799 by Pope Leo III, in the early years it was subordinated to the bishop of Würzburg. Since 855 the clergy had the right to elect the bishop, the diocese included the larger part of Lippe, Waldeck, and nearly half of the County of Ravensberg. In 1180 when the Duchy of Saxony ceased to exist, the rights which the old dukedom had exercised over Paderborn were transferred to the Archbishopric-Electorate of Cologne, the claims of the archbishops of Cologne were settled in the 13th century, almost wholly in favor of Paderborn. Under Bernhard II of Ibbenbüren the bailiwick over the diocese, which since the middle of the 11th century had been held as a fief by the Counts of Arnsberg, returned to the bishops. This was an important advance in the development of the position as a secular ruler in his temporalities. From this time on the bishops did not grant the bailiwick as a fief, but managed it themselves and they strove successfully to obtain the bailiwicks over the abbeys and monasteries situated in their diocese. Bishop Otto von Rietberg had to contend with Cologne, in 1281, when only bishop-elect, he received the regalia from Rudolph of Habsburg, and full judicial power. After the defeat of the Cologne arch bishop at the Battle of Worringen 1288 the bishops of Paderborn became increasingly sovereigns, Bernhard V of Lippe established a first territorial constitution. However he had to acknowledge the city of Paderborn as free from his judicial supremacy, heinrich III Spiegel zum Desenberg, also Abbot of Corvey, left his spiritual functions to a suffragan, in 1371 he rebuilt the Burg Neuhaus at Paderborn. Simon II, Count of Sternberg, involved the bishopric in feuds with the nobility, the wars of Dietrich, also Archbishop of Cologne, brought heavy debts upon the bishopric, during the feuds of the bishop with the city of Soest Paderborn was devastated. Under Eric, Duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen, the Protestant Reformation obtained a foothold in the diocese, hermann von Wied, also Archbishop of Cologne, sought to introduce the new teaching at Paderborn as well as Cologne, but he was opposed by all classes. The countships of Lippe, Waldeck, and Pyrmont, the part of the diocese in the County of Ravensberg, heinrich IV, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg was a Lutheran, he permitted the adoption of the Augsburg Confession by his subjects. In the city of Paderborn only the cathedral and the Monastery of Abdinghof remained faithful, to save the Catholic cause, the cathedral chapter summoned the Jesuits to Paderborn in 1580. Dietrich IV of Fürstenberg restored the practice of the Catholic religion, built a gymnasium for the Jesuits, and founded the University of Paderborn in 1614. During the German Mediatisation in 1802, the bishopric became Prussian, from 1807 until 1813 it was part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, while the bishopric as a state had been permanently dissolved, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paderborn was recreated by Pope Pius VII in 1821. The dioceses of Fulda and Hildesheim were made subordinate to it, when the Diocese of Essen was created in 1958, Paderborn lost a significant portion of its district to it. In 1994 Paderborn lost the part of its located in the former East Germany to the newly created Diocese of Magdeburg

23.
War of the Austrian Succession
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The War of the Austrian Succession involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresas succession to the Habsburg Monarchy. The war included King Georges War in British America, the War of Jenkins Ear, the First Carnatic War in India, the Jacobite rising of 1745 in Scotland, and the First and Second Silesian Wars. Austria was supported by Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, the enemies of France, as well as the Kingdom of Sardinia. France and Prussia were allied with the Electorate of Bavaria, the war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, by which Maria Theresa was confirmed as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary, but Prussia retained control of Silesia. But the peace was soon to be shattered, when Austrias desire to recapture Silesia intertwined with the political changes in Europe. In 1740, after the death of her father, Charles VI, Maria Theresa succeeded him as Queen of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Parma. The complications involved in a female Habsburg ruler had been long foreseen, problems began when King Frederick II of Prussia violated the Pragmatic Sanction and invaded Silesia on 16 December 1740, using the 1537 Treaty of Brieg as a pretext. For much of the century, France approached its wars in the same way. It would let its colonies defend themselves, or would offer only minimal help, similarly, several long land borders made an effective domestic army imperative for any ruler of France. At the end of the war, France gave back its European conquests, the British—by inclination as well as for pragmatic reasons—had tended to avoid large-scale commitments of troops on the Continent. For the War of the Austrian Succession, the British were allied with Austria, by the time of the Seven Years War, they were allied with its enemy, Prussia. In marked contrast to France, Britain strove to prosecute the war in the colonies once it became involved in the war. The British pursued a strategy of naval blockade and bombardment of enemy ports. They would harass enemy shipping and attack enemy outposts, frequently using colonists from nearby British colonies in the effort and this plan worked better in North America than in Europe, but set the stage for the Seven Years War. Prince Frederick had been only 28 years of age on 31 May 1740 when his father, Frederick William I died, neither Frederick nor his father had ever been fond of Austria and its various snubs against Prussia. Emperor Charles VI had made provision for the succession of his daughter, in support of his invasion of Silesia, Frederick also used a questionable interpretation of a treaty between the Hohenzollerns and the Piasts of Brieg as pretext. In particular, Frederick feared that Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was preparing to seize Silesia for himself to unite Saxony and Poland. The only recent combat experience of the Prussian Army was their participation in the War of the Polish Succession, accordingly, the Prussian Army had an uninspiring reputation and was counted as one of the many minor armies of the Holy Roman Empire

24.
House of Wittelsbach
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The Wittelsbach family is a European royal family and a German dynasty from Bavaria. The family also provided two Holy Roman Emperors, one King of the Romans, two Anti-Kings of Bohemia, one King of Hungary, one King of Denmark and Norway, the familys head, since 1996, is Franz, Duke of Bavaria. Berthold, Margrave in Bavaria, was the ancestor of Otto I, Count of Scheyern, whose third son Otto II, the Counts of Scheyern left Scheyern Castle in 1119 for Wittelsbach Castle and the former was given to monks to establish Scheyern Abbey. Duke Ottos son Louis I, Duke of Bavaria acquired also the Electorate of the Palatinate in 1214. On Duke Otto IIs death in 1253, his sons divided the Wittelsbach possessions between them, Henry became Duke of Lower Bavaria, and Louis II Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine. When Henrys branch died out in 1340 the Emperor Louis IV, the Bavarian branch kept the duchy of Bavaria until its extinction in 1777. His six sons succeeded him as Duke of Bavaria and Count of Holland, the Wittelsbachs lost the Tyrol with the death of duke Meinhard and the following Peace of Schärding - the Tyrol was finally renounced to the Habsburgs in 1369. In 1373 Otto, the last Wittelsbach regent of Brandenburg, released the country to the House of Luxembourg, on Duke Alberts death in 1404, he was succeeded in the Netherlands by his eldest son, William. A younger son, John III, became Bishop of Liège, however, on Williams death in 1417, a war of succession broke out between John and Williams daughter Jacqueline of Hainaut. This last episode of the Hook and Cod wars finally left the counties in Burgundian hands in 1432, with the Landshut War of Succession Bavaria was reunited in 1505 against the claim of the Palatinate branch under the Bavarian branch Bavaria-Munich. From 1549 to 1567 the Wittelsbach owned the County of Kladsko in Bohemia, strictly Catholic by upbringing, the Bavarian dukes became leaders of the German Counter-Reformation. From 1583 to 1761, the Bavarian branch of the dynasty provided the Prince-electors and Archbishops of Cologne and many other Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire, namely Liège. Wittelsbach princes served for example as Bishops of Regensburg, Freising, Liège, Münster, Hildesheim, Paderborn and Osnabrück, in 1623 under Maximilian I the Bavarian dukes were invested with the electoral dignity and the duchy became the Electorate of Bavaria. His grandson Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria served also as Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands and his son Emperor Charles VII was also king of Bohemia. With the death of Charles son Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria the Bavarian branch died out in 1777, the Palatinate branch kept the Palatinate until 1918 and succeeded also in Bavaria in 1777. With the Golden Bull of 1356 the Counts Palatine were invested with the electoral dignity, princes of the Palatinate branch served as Bishops of the Empire and also as Elector-Archbishops of Mainz and Elector-Archbishops of Trier. Jülich and Berg fell to the Wittelsbach Count Palatine Wolfgang William of Neuburg, in 1619, the Protestant Frederick V, Elector Palatine became King of Bohemia but was defeated by the Catholic Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria, a member of the Bavarian branch. As a result, the Upper Palatinate had to be ceded to the Bavarian branch in 1623, when the Thirty Years War concluded with the Treaty of Münster in 1648, a new additional electorate was created for the Count Palatine of the Rhine

25.
Charles VII, Holy Roman Emperor
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Charles VII was the prince-elector of Bavaria from 1726 and Holy Roman Emperor from 24 January 1742 until his death, in 1745. Charles Albert was born in Brussels, the son of Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria and Theresa Kunegunda Sobieska and his family was split during the War of the Spanish Succession and was for many years under house arrest in Austria. Only in 1715 was the family reunited, after attaining his majority in August 1715, he undertook an educational tour of Italy from 3 December 1715 until 24 August 1716. In 1717, he served with Bavarian auxiliaries in the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18, on 5 October 1722, Charles Albert married Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria, whom he had met at the imperial court in Vienna. She was the daughter of the late Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and his consort Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg, daughter of John Frederick. In 1725 Charles Albert visited Versailles for the wedding of Louis XV of France, in 1726, when his father died, Charles Albert became Duke of Bavaria and a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. He maintained good relations both with his Habsburg relatives and with France, continuing his fathers policies, in 1729 he instituted the knightly Order of St George. That year, he started building the Rothenberg Fortress. In continuance of the policy of his father, Charles Albert aspired to a higher rank. With the treaty of Nymphenburg concluded in July 1741, Charles Albert allied with France, so Charles Albert was crowned King of Bohemia in Prague when the Habsburgs were not yet defeated. He was unanimously elected King of the Romans on 24 January 1742, also with the vote of George II, Charles VII was the second Wittelsbach Emperor after Louis IV and the first Wittelsbach King of the Romans since the reign of Rupert of Germany. Shortly after the coronation most of Charles Alberts territories were overrun by the Austrians, the emperor fled Munich and resided for almost three years in the Palais Barckhaus in Frankfurt. Most of Bohemia was lost in December 1742 when the Austrians allowed the French under the Duc de Belle-Isle, a popular Latin saying about him was et Caesar et nihil, meaning both Emperor and nothing, a word-play on aut Caesar aut nihil, either Emperor or nothing. Charles Alberts general Ignaz Felix, Count of Törring-Jettenbach was compared to a drum, Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg was declared to be of full age ahead of time in 1744. The new commander of the Bavarian army, Friedrich Heinrich von Seckendorff, in 1743 his troops and their allies took Bavaria and Charles VII was able to return to Munich in April for some time. After the allied French had to retreat after defeats to the Rhine, the new campaign of Frederick II of Prussia during the Second Silesian War finally forced the Austrian army to leave Bavaria and to retreat back into Bohemia. In October 1744 Charles VII regained Munich and returned, suffering severely from gout, Charles died in January 1745. His brother Klemens August then again leaned toward Austria, and his son, with the Treaty of Füssen Austria recognized the legitimacy of Charles VIIs election as Holy Roman Emperor

26.
Frederick the Great
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Frederick II was King of Prussia from 1740 until 1786, the longest reign of any Hohenzollern king. Frederick was the last titled King in Prussia and declared himself King of Prussia after achieving full sovereignty for all historical Prussian lands, Prussia had greatly increased its territories and became a leading military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great and was affectionately nicknamed Der Alte Fritz by the Prussian, in his youth, Frederick was more interested in music and philosophy than the art of war. Upon ascending to the Prussian throne, he attacked Austria and claimed Silesia during the Silesian Wars, winning acclaim for himself. Near the end of his life, Frederick physically connected most of his realm by conquering Polish territories in the First Partition of Poland and he was an influential military theorist whose analysis emerged from his extensive personal battlefield experience and covered issues of strategy, tactics, mobility and logistics. Considering himself the first servant of the state, Frederick was a proponent of enlightened absolutism and he modernized the Prussian bureaucracy and civil service and pursued religious policies throughout his realm that ranged from tolerance to segregation. He reformed the system and made it possible for men not of noble stock to become judges. Frederick also encouraged immigrants of various nationalities and faiths to come to Prussia, some critics, however, point out his oppressive measures against conquered Polish subjects during the First Partition. Frederick supported arts and philosophers he favored, as well as allowing complete freedom of the press, Frederick is buried at his favorite residence, Sanssouci in Potsdam. Because he died childless, Frederick was succeeded by his nephew, Frederick William II, son of his brother, historian Leopold von Ranke was unstinting in his praise of Fredericks Heroic life, inspired by great ideas, filled with feats of arms. Immortalized by the raising of the Prussian state to the rank of a power, Johann Gustav Droysen was even more extolling. However, by the 21st century, a re-evaluation of his legacy as a great warrior, Frederick, the son of Frederick William I and his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, was born in Berlin on 24 January 1712. The birth of Frederick was welcomed by his grandfather, Frederick I, with more than usual pleasure, with the death of his father in 1713, Frederick William became King of Prussia, thus making young Frederick the crown prince. The new king wished for his sons and daughters to be educated not as royalty and he had been educated by a Frenchwoman, Madame de Montbail, who later became Madame de Rocoulle, and he wished that she educate his children. However, he possessed a violent temper and ruled Brandenburg-Prussia with absolute authority. As Frederick grew, his preference for music, literature and French culture clashed with his fathers militarism, in contrast, Fredericks mother Sophia was polite, charismatic and learned. Her father, George Louis of Brunswick-Lüneburg, succeeded to the British throne as King George I in 1714, Frederick was brought up by Huguenot governesses and tutors and learned French and German simultaneously. Although Frederick William I was raised a Calvinist, he feared he was not of the elect, to avoid the possibility of Frederick being motivated by the same concerns, the king ordered that his heir not be taught about predestination

27.
Seven Years' War
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The Seven Years War was a war fought between 1754 and 1763, the main conflict occurring in the seven-year period from 1756 to 1763. It involved every European great power of the time except the Ottoman Empire and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain on one side and the Kingdom of France on the other. Meanwhile, in India, the Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, faced with this sudden turn of events, Britain aligned herself with Prussia, in a series of political manoeuvres known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Conflict between Great Britain and France broke out in 1754–1756 when the British attacked disputed French positions in North America, meanwhile, rising power Prussia was struggling with Austria for dominance within and outside the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe. In 1756, the major powers switched partners, realizing that war was imminent, Prussia preemptively struck Saxony and quickly overran it. The result caused uproar across Europe, because of Austrias alliance with France to recapture Silesia, which had been lost in a previous war, Prussia formed an alliance with Britain. Reluctantly, by following the diet, most of the states of the empire joined Austrias cause. The Anglo-Prussian alliance was joined by smaller German states, Sweden, seeking to re-gain Pomerania joined the coalition, seeing its chance when virtually all of Europe opposed Prussia. Spain, bound by the Pacte de Famille, intervened on behalf of France, the Russian Empire was originally aligned with Austria, fearing Prussias ambition on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but switched sides upon the succession of Tsar Peter III in 1762. Naples, Sicily, and Savoy, although sided with the Franco-Spanish alliance, like Sweden, Russia concluded a separate peace with Prussia. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain and the Treaty of Hubertusburg between Saxony, Austria and Prussia, in 1763. The Native American tribes were excluded from the settlement, a subsequent conflict, Prussia emerged as a new European great power. Although Austria failed to retrieve the territory of Silesia from Prussia its military prowess was noted by the other powers. The involvement of Portugal, Spain and Sweden did not return them to their status as great powers. France was deprived of many of its colonies and had saddled itself with heavy war debts that its inefficient financial system could barely handle. Spain lost Florida but gained French Louisiana and regained control of its colonies, e. g. Cuba and the Philippines, France and Spain avenged their defeat in 1778 when the American Revolutionary War broke out, with hopes of destroying Britains dominance once and for all. The Seven Years War was perhaps the first true world war, having taken place almost 160 years before World War I and it was characterized in Europe by sieges and the arson of towns as well as open battles with heavy losses

28.
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor
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Joseph II was Holy Roman Emperor from 1765 to 1790 and ruler of the Habsburg lands from 1780 to 1790. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I and he was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the House of Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine. He has been ranked, with Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia and his policies are now known as Josephinism. He died with no sons and was succeeded by his younger brother, Joseph was born in the midst of the early upheavals of the War of the Austrian Succession. His real education was given to him through the writings of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes and he married Princess Isabella of Parma in October 1760, a union fashioned to bolster the 1756 defensive pact between France and Austria. Joseph loved his bride, Isabella, finding her both stimulating and charming, and she sought, with care to cultivate his favor. The marriage of Joseph and Isabella resulted in the birth of a daughter, Isabella was fearful of pregnancy and early death. Her own pregnancy proved difficult as she suffered symptoms of pain, illness. She remained bedridden for six weeks after their daughters birth, almost immediately on the back of their newfound parenthood, the couple then endured two consecutive miscarriages—an ordeal particularly hard on Isabella—followed quickly by another pregnancy. Pregnancy was again provoking melancholy, fears and dread in Isabella, progressively ill with smallpox and strained by sudden childbirth and tragedy, Isabella died the following week. This marriage proved unhappy, albeit brief, as it lasted only two years. Though Maria Josepha loved her husband, she felt timid and inferior in his company, lacking common interests or pleasures, the relationship offered little for Joseph, who confessed he felt no love for her in return. He adapted by distancing himself from his wife to the point of near total avoidance, seeing her only at meals, Maria Josepha, in turn, suffered considerable misery in finding herself locked in a cold, loveless union. Four months after the anniversary of their wedding, Maria Josepha grew ill. Joseph neither visited her during her illness nor attended her funeral, though he expressed regret for not having shown her better kindness. One thing the union did provide him was the possibility of laying claim to a portion of Bavaria. In 1770, at the age of seven, Josephs only surviving child, Maria Theresa, became ill with pleurisy, the loss of his daughter was deeply traumatic for him and left him profoundly grief-stricken and scarred. He was made a member of the council of state

29.
War of the Bavarian Succession
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A Saxon–Prussian alliance fought the War of the Bavarian Succession against the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy to prevent the Habsburgs from acquiring the Electorate of Bavaria. On 30 December 1777, Maximilian Joseph, the last of the line of Wittelsbach, died of smallpox. Charles IV Theodore, a scion of a branch of the House of Wittelsbach, held the closest claim of kinship. His cousin, Charles II August, Duke of Zweibrücken, therefore had a legal claim as Charles Theodores heir presumptive. Across Bavarias southern border, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II coveted the Bavarian territory and had married Maximilian Josephs sister Maria Josepha in 1765 to strengthen any claim he could extend. His agreement with the heir, Charles Theodore, to partition the territory neglected any claims of the heir presumptive, acquiring territory in the German-speaking states was an essential part of Josephs policy to expand his familys influence in Central Europe. For Frederick the Great, Josephs claim threatened the Prussian ascendancy in German politics, Joseph would not drop his claim despite his mothers contrary insistence. Despite his dislike of Prussia, which had been Saxonys enemy in two wars, Charles August sought the support of Frederick, who was happy to challenge the Habsburgs. France became involved to maintain the balance of power, finally, Catherine the Greats threat to intervene on the side of Prussia with fifty thousand Russian troops forced Joseph to reconsider his position. With Catherines assistance, he and Frederick negotiated a solution to the problem of the Bavarian succession with the Treaty of Teschen, the subsequent French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars differed in scope, strategy, organization and tactics. In 1713, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI established a line of succession that gave precedence to his own daughters over the daughters of his brother, to protect the Habsburg inheritance, he coerced, cajoled, and persuaded the crowned heads of Europe to accept the Pragmatic Sanction. In this agreement, they acknowledged any of his daughters as the rightful Queen of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia. Holy Roman Emperors had been elected from the House of Habsburg for most of the three centuries. Charles VI arranged a marriage of his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa, Francis relinquished the Duchy of Lorraine near France in exchange for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany near Austria to make himself a more appealing candidate for eventual election as Emperor. On paper, many heads of state and, most importantly, the rulers of the German states of the Holy Roman Empire, accepted the Pragmatic Sanction and the idea of Francis as the next Emperor. Two key exceptions, the Duchy of Bavaria and Saxony, held important electoral votes, when Charles died in 1740, Maria Theresa had to fight for her familys entitlements in Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, and her husband faced competition in his election as the Holy Roman Emperor. If women were going to inherit, he claimed, then he should be first in line, his wife, both Charles VI and his predecessor Joseph I had died without sons. Charles of Bavaria suggested that the succession pass to Josephs female children, rather than to the daughters of the younger brother

30.
Archbishopric of Salzburg
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The Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical principality and state of the Holy Roman Empire. It comprised the territory ruled by the Archbishops of Salzburg. The capital of the archbishopric was Salzburg, the former Roman city of Iuvavum, from the late 13th century onwards, the archbishops gradually reached the status of Imperial immediacy and independence from the Bavarian dukes. Salzburg remained a principality until its secularisation to the short-lived Electorate of Salzburg in 1803. The last prince-archbishop exercising secular authority was Count Hieronymus von Colloredo, the bishoprics territory was roughly congruent with the present-day Austrian state of Salzburg. It stretched along the Salzach river from the High Tauern range—Mt, großvenediger at 3,666 m —at the main chain of the Alps in the south down to the Alpine foothills in the north. Here it also comprised the present-day Rupertiwinkel on the shore of the Salzach. In the southeast, Salzburg adjoined the Duchy of Styria, also ruled by the Habsburg dukes in personal union since 1192. By 1335, the Austrian regents had also acquired the old Duchy of Carinthia in the south, the Habsburg encirclement was nearly completed, when in 1363 the archdukes also attained the County of Tyrol in the west. Very little is known of the bishopric during the Migration Period. In his conflict with the Rugii tribes, Odoacer had his brother Onoulphus evacuate the Noricum ripense province in 487/88, whereby Iuvavum was abandoned, Saint Severinus had already died in 482 in the castrum of Favianis, six years before the departure of the Roman legions from the region. After erecting a church at nearby Seekirchen he discovered the ruins of Iuvavum overgrown with brambles and remnants of the Romance population, the former theory that he arrived already in c. In either case, it was not until after 700 that Christian civilisation re-emerged in the region, Rupert established a monastery dedicated to Saint Peter at the site of a Late Antique church in former Iuvavum. In 711 Rupert also founded the Cella Maximiliana in the Pongau region and his niece Erentrude established a Bendictine nunnery at nearby Nonnberg about 713. In 739 Archbishop Boniface, with the blessing of Pope Gregory III, completed the work of Saint Rupert and raised Salzburg to a bishopric, St. Vergilius, abbot of St. Peters since about 749, had quarrelled with St. Boniface over the existence of antipodes. He nevertheless became bishop about 767, had the first cathedral erected in 774, monasteries were founded and all of Carinthia was slowly Christianised. While Arno was in Rome attending to some of Charlemagnes business in 798, when the dispute over the ecclesiastical border between Salzburg and the Patriarchate of Aquileia broke out, Charlemagne declared the Drava to be the border. Arno also began the copying of 150 volumes from the court of Charlemagne, Archbishop Adalwin suffered great troubles when King Rastislav of Moravia attempted to remove his realm from the ecclesiastical influence of East Francia

31.
Berchtesgaden Provostry
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The location of the monastery was strategically important. Secondly, the Berchtesgaden valley is almost entirely enclosed by mountains, except for a single point of access to the north. In view of the geopolitical circumstances, the provosts had little difficulty in establishing the territorial independence of the monastery. The title was unique within the Empire, the only other provost who ever gained the princely title was the one at the Swabian Imperial Ellwangen Abbey. The position of Prince-Provost was frequently held in conjunction with other high positions. The monastic buildings were used for a while as a barracks, but in 1818 the monastery was designated as a residence of the Wittelsbachs. Following the end of the Bavarian monarchy, the buildings since 1923 are administrated by the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund, some of the rooms are open to the public, while other parts of the building are still used by the Wittelsbachs. The monastic church now serves as the church of Berchtesgaden

32.
French Revolutionary Wars
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The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts, lasting from 1792 until 1802, resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted the French First Republic against Britain, Austria and several other monarchies and they are divided in two periods, the War of the First Coalition and the War of the Second Coalition. Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension as the political ambitions of the Revolution expanded, French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe. The Revolutionary Wars began from increasing political pressure on King Louis XVI of France to prove his loyalty to the new direction France was taking. In the spring of 1792, France declared war on Prussia and Austria, the victory rejuvenated the French nation and emboldened the National Convention to abolish the monarchy. A series of victories by the new French armies abruptly ended with defeat at Neerwinden in the spring of 1793, by 1795, the French had captured the Austrian Netherlands and knocked Spain and Prussia out of the war with the Peace of Basel. A hitherto unknown general called Napoleon Bonaparte began his first campaign in Italy in April 1796, in less than a year, French armies under Napoleon decimated the Habsburg forces and evicted them from the Italian peninsula, winning almost every battle and capturing 150,000 prisoners. With French forces marching towards Vienna, the Austrians sued for peace and agreed to the Treaty of Campo Formio, the War of the Second Coalition began with the French invasion of Egypt, headed by Napoleon, in 1798. The Allies took the opportunity presented by the French strategic effort in the Middle East to regain territories lost from the First Coalition. The war began well for the Allies in Europe, where they pushed the French out of Italy and invaded Switzerland—racking up victories at Magnano, Cassano. However, their efforts largely unraveled with the French victory at Zurich in September 1799, meanwhile, Napoleons forces annihilated a series of Egyptian and Ottoman armies at the battles of the Pyramids, Mount Tabor, and Abukir. These victories and the conquest of Egypt further enhanced Napoleons popularity back in France, however, the Royal Navy had managed to inflict a humiliating defeat on the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, further strengthening British control of the Mediterranean. Napoleons arrival from Egypt led to the fall of the Directory in the Coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon then reorganized the French army and launched a new assault against the Austrians in Italy during the spring of 1800. This latest effort culminated in a decisive French victory at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800, another crushing French triumph at Hohenlinden in Bavaria forced the Austrians to seek peace for a second time, leading to the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. With Austria and Russia out of the war, the United Kingdom found itself increasingly isolated and agreed to the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleons government in 1802, concluding the Revolutionary Wars. The lingering tensions proved too difficult to contain, however, in 1789–1792, the entire governmental structure of France was transformed to fall into line with the Revolutionary principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. As a result, one of the first major elements of the French state to be restructured was the army, the transformation of the army was best seen in the officer corps. Before the revolution 90% had been nobility, compared to only 3% in 1794, Revolutionary fervour was high, and was closely monitored by the Committee of Public Safety, which assigned Representatives on Mission to keep watch on generals

33.
Napoleon
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Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, one of the greatest commanders in history, his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleons political and cultural legacy has ensured his status as one of the most celebrated and he was born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Corsica to a relatively modest family from the minor nobility. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, Napoleon was serving as an officer in the French army. Seizing the new opportunities presented by the Revolution, he rose through the ranks of the military. The Directory eventually gave him command of the Army of Italy after he suppressed a revolt against the government from royalist insurgents, in 1798, he led a military expedition to Egypt that served as a springboard to political power. He engineered a coup in November 1799 and became First Consul of the Republic and his ambition and public approval inspired him to go further, and in 1804 he became the first Emperor of the French. Intractable differences with the British meant that the French were facing a Third Coalition by 1805, in 1806, the Fourth Coalition took up arms against him because Prussia became worried about growing French influence on the continent. Napoleon quickly defeated Prussia at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt, then marched the Grand Army deep into Eastern Europe, France then forced the defeated nations of the Fourth Coalition to sign the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent. Tilsit signified the high watermark of the French Empire, hoping to extend the Continental System and choke off British trade with the European mainland, Napoleon invaded Iberia and declared his brother Joseph the King of Spain in 1808. The Spanish and the Portuguese revolted with British support, the Peninsular War lasted six years, featured extensive guerrilla warfare, and ended in victory for the Allies. The Continental System caused recurring diplomatic conflicts between France and its client states, especially Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, the Russians routinely violated the Continental System and enticed Napoleon into another war. The French launched an invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812. The resulting campaign witnessed the collapse of the Grand Army, the destruction of Russian cities, in 1813, Prussia and Austria joined Russian forces in a Sixth Coalition against France. A lengthy military campaign culminated in a large Allied army defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, the Allies then invaded France and captured Paris in the spring of 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April. He was exiled to the island of Elba near Rome and the Bourbons were restored to power, however, Napoleon escaped from Elba in February 1815 and took control of France once again. The Allies responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June, the British exiled him to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died six years later at the age of 51

34.
Peace of Basel
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The Peace of Basel of 1795 consists of three peace treaties involving France during the French Revolution. With great diplomatic cunning, the treaties enabled France to placate and divide its enemies of the First Coalition, thereafter, Revolutionary France emerged as a major European power. The first treaty, on 5 April 1795 between France and Prussia, had been discussion since 1794. Prussia withdrew from the coalition that had been working on the partition of Poland and. In secret, Prussia recognized French control of the west bank of the Rhine, France returned all of the lands east of the Rhine captured during the war. On the night of 6 April, the document was signed by the representatives of France and Prussia, François de Barthélemy and they were not face to face, each was in his own accommodation in Rosshof or the Markgräflerhof, and the papers were passed around by a courier. Peter Ochs drew up the Treaty and served as a mediator for a significant proportion of these financial statements, Prussia stuck to the agreement of the Treaty of Basel until 1806, when it joined the Fourth Coalition. In the second treaty, on 22 July, Spain ceded the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola to France in exchange for keeping Gipuzkoa. The French also came at night to sign the treaty between France and Spain in which Spain was represented by Domingo dYriarte, who signed the treaty in the mansion of Ochs. These treaties with Prussia and Spain had the effect of breaking the alliance between the French Republics two main opponents of the First Coalition. On 28 August 1795, the treaty was completed, a peace between France and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, signed by Friedrich Sigismund Waitz von Eschen. There was also an agreement to exchange the Austrian troops who had captured in Belgium. Campaigns of 1795 in the French Revolutionary Wars Cisrhenian Republic List of treaties

35.
Vest Recklinghausen
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Vest Recklinghausen was an ecclesiastical territory in the Holy Roman Empire, located in the center of todays North Rhine-Westphalia. The rivers Emscher and Lippe formed the border with the County of Mark and Essen Abbey in the south, in the east, a fortification secured the border with Dortmund and in the west it was bordered by the Duchy of Cleves. Today Vest Recklinghausen is part of the district of Recklinghausen, with parts of Gelsenkirchen, Oberhausen, the term ´Vest´, describing a judicial district, is still used locally, for instance in a local radio station and in a local museum. Vest Recklinghausen was first mentioned in 1228 as a fiefdom of the Archbishopric of Cologne, the administrator lived in castle Westerholt, located in Herten. During the Cologne War, Vest Recklinghausen was occupied and sacked several times by troops from both sides of the conflict, in 1584, the territory was sacked again, this time by the competing archbishop, Ernst of Bavaria. The western parishes included Dorsten and the parishes Dorsten, Bottrop, Buer, Gladbeck, Horst, Kirchhellen, Marl, Osterfeld and Polsum. On 4 September 1614 Ferdinand of Bavaria, the successor to his uncle, Ernst of Bavaria, as the Elector of Cologne, forbade non-Catholic from staying in Vest Recklinghausen. During the secularization of the states in 1802–03, also known as the German Mediatisation. In 1811 it was added to the Grand Duchy of Berg, citations Sources Benians, Ernest Alfred, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton, Baron, Adolphus William Ward, Sir, G W Prothero, Stanley Mordaunt Leathes, Sir. 4, New York, Funk and Wagnalls,1909, pp. 439–441, der Kampf um das Erzstift Köln zur Zeit der Kurfürsten. Lin, J. Cologne War The Catholic Encyclopedia, history of the Vest Recklinghausen and a historical card from 1789 Information to the location of the district of Recklinghausen

36.
Stadtholder
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In the Low Countries, stadtholder, literally steward, designated a medieval official and then a national leader. For the last half century of its existence, it became a hereditary role. His son, Prince William V, was the last stadtholder of the republic, whose own son, King William I, became the first king of the Netherlands. The Dutch Monarchy is thus descended from the first stadtholder of the young Republic, William of Orange, the title stadtholder is roughly comparable to Englands historic title Lord Lieutenant. Its component parts literally translate as place holder, or as a cognate, stead holder. Note, however, that is not the word for the rank of lieutenant. Stadtholders in the Middle Ages were appointed by feudal lords to represent them in their absence, if a lord had several dominions, some of these could be ruled by a permanent stadtholder, to whom was delegated the full authority of the lord. A stadtholder was thus more powerful than a governor, who had limited authority. The local rulers of the independent provinces of the Low Countries made extensive use of stadtholders, in the 15th century the Dukes of Burgundy acquired most of the Low Countries, and these Burgundian Netherlands mostly each had their own stadtholder. Only the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and two smaller territories remained outside his domains, stadtholders continued to be appointed to represent Charles and King Philip II, his son and successor in Spain and the Low Countries. Due to the centralist and absolutist policies of Philip, the power of the stadtholders strongly diminished. The stadtholder no longer represented the lord but became the highest executive official, although each province could assign its own stadtholder, most stadtholders held appointments from several provinces at the same time. As these councils themselves appointed most members of the states, the stadtholder could very indirectly influence the general policy, in the army, he could appoint officers by himself, in the navy only affirm appointments of the five admiralty councils. Legal powers of the stadtholder were thus limited, and by law he was a mere official. His real powers, however, were greater, especially given the martial law atmosphere of the permanent Eighty Years War. Maurice of Orange after 1618 ruled as a dictator. The leader of the Dutch Revolt was William the Silent, he had been appointed stadtholder in 1572 by the first province to rebel and his personal influence and reputation was subsequently associated with the office and transferred to members of his house. Maurice in 1618 and William III of Orange from 1672 replaced entire city councils with their partisans to increase their power, by intimidation, the stadtholders tried to extend their right of affirmation

37.
Batavian Republic
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The Batavian Republic was the successor of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on 19 January 1795, and ended on 5 June 1806, in early 1795, intervention by French revolutionary forces led to the downfall of the old Dutch Republic. The new Republic enjoyed widespread support from the Dutch population and was the product of a popular revolution. Nevertheless, it clearly was founded with the support of the revolutionary French Republic. The political, economic and social reforms that were brought about during the short duration of the Batavian Republic have had a lasting impact. The confederal structure of the old Dutch Republic was permanently replaced by a unitary state, for the first time in Dutch history, the constitution that was adopted in 1798 had a genuinely democratic character. For a while the Republic was governed democratically, although the coup détat of 1801 put an authoritarian regime in power, after another change in constitution, nevertheless, the memory of this brief experiment with democracy helped smooth the transition to a more democratic government in 1848. A type of government was introduced for the first time in Dutch history. The new king, Louis Bonaparte, surprisingly did not slavishly follow French dictates either, the final days of the intermittent constitutional monarchy/republic, the Dutch Republic, which had governed the Netherlands since the late 16th century, were quite eventful. Most Patriots went into exile in France, while Hollands own Ancien Régime strengthened its grip on Dutch government chiefly through the Orangist Grand Pensionary Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel. Only two years later, the French Revolution began, which embraced many of the ideas that the Patriots had espoused in their own revolt. The Stadtholder joined the ill-fated First Coalition of countries in their attempt to subdue the suddenly anti-Austrian French First Republic, however, in many cities revolution broke out even before the French arrived and Revolutionary Committees took over the city governments, and the national government also. William was forced to flee to England on a boat on 18 January 1795. Though the French presented themselves as liberators, they behaved like conquerors, apart from imposing territorial concessions and a huge indemnity, this obligated the Dutch to maintain a French army of occupation of 25,000 men. However, this did not mean that it lost its independence in all respects, the program of reform that the Dutch revolutionaries attempted to put in place was mostly driven by indigenous needs and aspirations. The political events in the Netherlands were mainly derived from Dutch initiative, the French were responsible for at least one of the coups détat, and the French ambassador often acted as a proconsul. At first, the revolutionaries used the constitutional machinery of the old confederal republic and they resumed where they had left off after the purge in 1787 of Patriot regents, taking over the offices of the Orangist regents that were now purged in their turn. Though the political make-up of the States-General changed appreciably because of change in personnel

38.
Treaty of Campo Formio
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The Treaty of Campo Formio was signed on 18 October 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Philipp von Cobenzl as representatives of the French Republic and the Austrian monarchy, respectively. The treaty followed the armistice of Leoben, which had forced on the Habsburgs by Napoleons victorious campaign in Italy. It definitively ended the War of the First Coalition and left Great Britain fighting alone against revolutionary France, the treaty, in its public articles, only concerned France and Austria. It called for a Congress of Rastatt to be held to negotiate a peace for the Holy Roman Empire. In its secret articles, Austria, as the state of the Emperor. The congress failed to achieve a peace by early 1799 and on 12 March France declared war on Austria again and this new war, the War of the Second Coalition, ended with the Peace of Lunéville, a peace for the whole Empire, in 1801. Beyond the usual clauses of firm and inviolable peace, the treaty transferred a number of Austrian territories into French hands, lands ceded included the Austrian Netherlands and certain islands in the Mediterranean, including Corfu and other Venetian islands in the Adriatic Sea. Venice and its territories were divided between the two states, Venice, Istria and Dalmatia were turned over to the Austrian emperor, Austria recognized the Cisalpine Republic and the newly created Ligurian Republic, formed of Genovese territories, as independent powers. In addition, the states of the Regnum Italicum formally ceased to owe fealty to the Holy Roman Emperor, free French navigation was guaranteed on the Rhine, the Meuse and the Moselle. The French Republic had been expanded into areas that had never before been under French control, the treaty was composed and signed after five months of negotiations. It was basically what had been agreed earlier at the Peace of Leoben in April 1797, during the negotiating period the French had to crush a royalist coup in September. That was used as a cause for the arrest and deportation of royalist, one consequence was the Peasants War, which erupted in the Southern Netherlands in 1798 following the French introduction of conscription. As a result of the treaty, Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, by passing Venetian possessions in Greece, such as the Ionian Islands, to French rule, the treaty had an effect on later Greek history neither intended nor expected at the time. Campo Formio, now called Campoformido, is a village west of Udine in north-eastern Italy, the French commander resided at Villa Manin – the country mansion of Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice – near Codroipo. The treaty was signed in an old house in the square of the village, property of Bertrando Del Torre. The following 18 January 1798, Austrian troops entered Venice, and on the 21st, they held a reception at the Doges Palace. Civiltà di Venezia, Volume 3, l’età moderna, the French Revolution, Volume II From 1793–1799. The Great Nation, France from Louis XV to Napoleon 1715–99, the Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848

39.
Second Congress of Rastatt
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The congress was interrupted when Austria and Russia resumed war against France in March 1799 at the start of the War of the Second Coalition, thus rendering the proceedings moot. Furthermore, as the French delegates attempted to return home, they were attacked by Austrian cavalrymen or possibly French royalists masquerading as such, two diplomats were killed and a third seriously injured. The congress was held at Rastatt near Karlsruhe and it is on this basis that deliberations on a compensation plan will resume after the signing of the Treaty of Lunéville in February 1801. The congress also had a sequel of some interest, as the three French representatives were leaving the town in April 1799 they were waylaid, and two of them were assassinated by some Hungarian soldiers. On the other hand, some think that the deed was the work of French emigrants. Since it was expected that a territorial reorganization of the Empire would result from the congress, it was followed with considerable interest, even passion. Although indecisive from a point of view the Congress brought high society to the area of Baden and was responsible for resurgence of interest in the spa town of Baden Baden. Internationalization of the Danube River This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh

40.
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
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Amalie Theresa was born on 6 April 1807 at the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Hofburg, Vienna and died the next day. Her mother fell ill after giving birth to her and died less than a week afterwards, as a daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, she was born with the title Archduchess of Austria and the style Imperial and Royal Highness

41.
Bonaparte, First Consul
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Bonaparte, First Consul is an 1804 portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. The painting is now in the collection of the Curtius Museum in Liège, posing the hand inside the waistcoat was often used in portraits of rulers to indicate calm and stable leadership. On 1 August 1803 Bonaparte stopped in Liège for two days on his march across the nine annexed départements. A large crowd gathered to acclaim Bonaparte and some even knelt in his path, the citys head of state met Bonaparte in the Amercœur quarter, which had been devastated by Austrian bombardment on leaving the city in 1794 after the battle of Sprimont. Deeply impressed by the misery, Bonaparte decreed 300,000 francs to the prefect of Ourthe, baron Micoud dUmons. The same evening, Bonaparte told the Second Consul I am extremely content at the spirit of the inhabitants of Liège. To show his satisfaction, Bonaparte announced his intention to offer the city of Liège a portrait of him by Ingres, Ingres was 23 when he received the commission for the painting from the city of Liège. He was unable to get Bonaparte to sit for it and had to base the pose on a portrait of him from 1802 by Jean-Antoine Gros, Ingres painting shows its subject aged 34 with his right hand about to sign an act titled Faubourg d’Amercœur rebâti. Bonaparte is shown not as a revolutionary or in the blue uniform he wears in Gross Bonaparte au pont dArcole. Instead of resting his hand on his sword in a pose, he assumes a civilian one. The curtain is open in the background showing St. Lamberts Cathedral, Liège as complete, the excesses of the French Revolution and of the counter-revolutionaries were put into perspective by the painting, in a context of détente and reconciliation between France and the Catholic Church. Pages de petite histoire, France et Wallonie 1789-1830, tinterow, Gary, Conisbee, Philip, Naef, Hans. Portraits by Ingres, Image of an Epoch, new York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.1999

42.
Alexander I of Russia
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Alexander I reigned as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825. He was the son of Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg, Alexander was the first Russian King of Poland, reigning from 1815 to 1825, as well as the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland. He was sometimes called Alexander the Blessed and he was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I, and succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and emperor, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, in the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and major, liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. He promised constitutional reforms and a desperately needed reform of serfdom in Russia, Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The Collegia was abolished and replaced by the The State Council, plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution. In foreign policy, he changed Russias position relative to France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance and he fought a small-scale naval war against Britain between 1807 and 1812. He and Napoleon could never agree, especially about Poland, the tsars greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleons invasion of Russia proved a total disaster for the French. As part of the coalition against Napoleon he gained some spoils in Finland and Poland. He formed the Holy Alliance to suppress revolutionary movements in Europe that he saw as threats to legitimate Christian monarchs. He helped Austrias Klemens von Metternich in suppressing all national and liberal movements, in the second half of his reign he was increasingly arbitrary, reactionary and fearful of plots against him, he ended many earlier reforms. He purged schools of teachers, as education became more religiously oriented as well as politically conservative. Speransky was replaced as advisor with the artillery inspector Aleksey Arakcheyev. Alexander died of typhus in December 1825 while on a trip to southern Russia and he left no children as heirs and both of his brothers wanted the other to become emperor. After a period of confusion that included the failed Decembrist revolt of liberal army officers, he was succeeded by his younger brother. Alexander and his younger brother Constantine were raised by their grandmother, some sources allege that she planned to remove her son Paul I from the succession altogether. From the free-thinking atmosphere of the court of Catherine and his Swiss tutor, Frédéric-César de La Harpe, but from his military governor, Nikolay Saltykov, he imbibed the traditions of Russian autocracy

43.
Le Moniteur Universel
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Le Moniteur had a large circulation in France and Europe, and also in America during the French Revolution. The interest aroused by the debates of the first National Assembly suggested to Hugues-Bernard Maret the idea of publishing them in the Bulletin de lAssemblée, on December 2,1799 Le Moniteur was declared an official newspaper. Napoleon controlled it via Hugues-Bernard Maret and Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, due to Napoleons strict controls of the press, the Moniteurs reports of legislative debates were replaced by bulletins of the Grand Army and polemical articles directed against England. The words Gazette Nationale were dropped from the name on January 1,1811. The newspaper also became less political, articles on literature, science. Le Moniteur ceased publication on December 31,1868, being superseded as the journal of the French Empire by what is known now as the Journal Officiel de la République Française. History of French newspapers Kulstein, David I, the Ideas of Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, Publisher of the Moniteur Universel, on the French Revolution. French Historical Studies 4#3 pp 304-19 Popkin, Jeremy D, revolutionary News, The Press in France, 1789-1799

44.
Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany
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Ferdinand III was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1790 to 1801 and, after a period of disenfranchisement, again from 1814 to 1824. He was also the Prince-elector and Grand Duke of Salzburg and Grand Duke of Würzburg, Ferdinand was born in Florence, Tuscany, into the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. He was the son of Leopold, then Grand-Duke of Tuscany. When his father was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand succeeded him as Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1792 during the French Revolution, Ferdinand became the first monarch to recognize the new French First Republic formally, and he attempted to work peacefully with it. As the French Revolutionary Wars commenced, however, the rulers of Britain, Ferdinand provided his allies with passive support but no enthusiasm, and after he witnessed a year of resounding victories by the French, he became the first member of the coalition to give up. In a proclamation dated 1 March 1795, he abandoned the alliance, on 25 December 1805, Ferdinand had to give up Salzburg as well, which by the Treaty of Pressburg was annexed by his older brother, Emperor Francis II. Ferdinand was then made Duke of Würzburg, a new state created for him from the old Bishopric of Würzburg, with the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, he took the new title of Grand Duke of Würzburg. On 30 May 1814, after Napoleons fall, Ferdinand was restored as Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand died in 1824 in Florence and was succeeded by his son Leopold. Grand Duchess Luisa died when they were all young, on 19 September 1802. Two decades later, in Florence on 6 May 1821, Ferdinand married again, this time to the much younger Princess Maria Ferdinanda of Saxony. She was the daughter of Maximilian, Prince of Saxony, and his wife Caroline of Bourbon-Parma, she was also his first cousin once removed, though Ferdinand was likely hoping to produce another male heir, there were no children born of this second marriage. House of Habsburg, Tuscan Branch, family tree by Ferdinand Schevill in A Political History of Modern Europe

Former collegiate church of St. Servatius in Quedlinburg, founded in 936 by King Otto I, at the request of his mother Queen Matilda, in honour of her late husband, Otto's father, King Henry the Fowler, and as his memorial

The Prince-Bishop of Liège, member of the Imperial estates, enjoyed Imperial immediacy and therefore could negotiate and sign international treaties on his own, as long as they were not directed against the Emperor and the Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire in 1789. Each of these states (different colours) on the map had a specific set of legal rights that governed its social, economic, and juridical relationships between the state and the emperor, and among the states themselves.